Ben O'Connor has defied the odds to increase his lead at the end of the first week of the Vuelta a Espana and remain in pole position to become only Australia's third cycling Grand Tour winner.
The man from Perth had looked vulnerable to losing a chunk of time to his nearest pursuer Primoz Roglic in the Sierra Nevada mountains on Sunday after squandering nearly a minute of his lead behind the victorious Slovenian in Saturday's less demanding stage.
Yet on a day when Britain's Adam Yates produced the same sort of race-altering solo win that O'Connor had delivered on stage six, the courageous Australian actually turned the tables on three-time champ Roglic in the brutally hot conditions at the end of the ninth 'queen' stage from Motril to Granada.
