The day was always likely to end with the sprinters taking the headlines, but the early news featured one of the pre-race favourites, this year's Tour de France winner Chris Froome, announcing he was withdrawing from the race after suffering a fractured foot in a crash on yesterday’s stage.

In the absence of Froome, Team Sky revealed they would be switching their focus to supporting Mikel Nieve, currently eighth on the general classification.

Within the opening 15km of the stage from Escaldes-Engordany to Lleida a five-man breakaway of Colombia’s Miguel Ángel Rubiano, South Africa’s Jaco Venter, The Netherlands’ Bert Jan Lindeman and French duo Maxime Bouet and Alexis Gougeard had established a 20 second advantage over the main field.

Having reached the top of the category two Coll de Bóixols,  the steepest ascent on an otherwise flat day, their advantage rose narrowly to more than three minutes and with the leaders continuing to work together the gap then grew to nearly six minutes with 108km to go.

The peloton remained in control of the move, however, and having reduced their advantage to a single minute as they approached 12km from the finish, the sprinters' teams began to up the pace further as they began to jostle for position ahead of reaching Lleida.

Van Poppel’s chances of victory looked to have come to an end after suffering a puncture with 10km left to race but the Dutchman rejoined and was helped by his Trek Factory team-mates to move back into contention.

The prospect of a victory for the sprinters,  though, looked in doubt as they entered the final kilometre with the breakaway still proving resistant, but within the closing metres their challenge came to an end.

South Africa’s Darryl Impey was first to launch the sprint but it was the 22-year-old Van Poppel who claimed victory, jumping off the wheel of German sprinter John Degenkolb before bursting to the line in a winning time of 4 hours 02min 11sec.

By securing his maiden Grand Tour stage Van Poppel followed in the footsteps of his father, Jean-Paul van Poppel, who earned nine stage wins at the Vuelta a España during an excellent career. 

Italy’s Fabio Aru held on to the race leader’s red jersey for a second day with the Astana cyclist finishing safely in the peloton alongside his nearest rivals, Joaquim Rodriguez of Spain and The Netherlands’ Tom Dumoulin, lie 27 and 30 seconds adrift respectively.

The pair might be tempted to chance their arm on stage 13, with the profile showing a hilly 168km route from Calatayud to Tarazona.

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