Antón climbs the standings in Romandie

Igor Antón failed to come away with a result but showed he's in decent shape by staying with the best climbers behind stage winner Simon Spilak and overall leader Chris Froome in Saturday's Tour de Romandie queen-stage.

The Team Sky leader consolidated his lead on GC by bridging across to Katusha's little Slovenian on the day's weather-enforced altered final climb, building a big gap back to the chasers and crossing the line in Les Diablerets more than a minute ahead of the first chase group.

In that chase group was Euskaltel's leader Igor Antón who came across tenth to rise to 13th on GC with only tomorrow's final-day time trial to go. The 30-year-old just about did enough to stay with the select group and even forced the pace for a few seconds in the closing clicks, but now appears unlikely to finish any higher than his current overall standing considering his relative weakness against the clock.

Sicard and Astarloza once again showed they're there or thereabouts by ceding less than three minutes, meaning they're both inside the top 40 overall. Mikel Landa, at his best a factor on stages like these, got into the break of the day to give Euskaltel presence all stage, while Garkoitz Bravo was once again active in his ultimately unsuccessful quest to win the mountain's jersey.

BMC's lanky German Marcus Burghardt was active early and did enough to add to his lead, Bravo now 17 points back.

Results (full results here):

• (1, Simon Spilak (Katusha), 5:10:00)
• 10, Igor Antón, 1:03
• 31, Romain Sicard, 2:40
• 34, Mikel Astarloza, s.t.
• 62, Mikel Landa, 13:48
• 66, Garikoitz Bravo, s.t.
• 111, Adrián Sáez, 29:10
• 115, Peio Bilbao, s.t.
• DNF: Juan José Lobato

General classification:

• (1, Chris Froome (Sky), 19:03:10)
• 13, Igor Antón, 1:57
• 29, Romain Sicard, 3:36
• 34, Mikel Astarloza, 4:09
• 76, Garikoitz Bravo, 31:15
• 77, Mikel Landa, 31:49
• 101, Adrián Sáez, 48:11
• 104, Peio Bilbao, 53:58