Hello and welcome to live coverage of Stage 15 of La Vuelta - the third of three succesive summit finishes, a 178km schlep from Ribera de Arriba to Lagos de Covadonga.

George Bennett is driving the pace on the front of the break and he's giving it such welly that he opens up a small gap before flicking the elbow. When no one comes through he looks back and sees that he's distanced his fellow escapees a little, so he eases up and drops back to seek out his team-mate Danny van Poppel, who is actually off the back talking to his LottoNL-Jumbo directeur sportif. 2km to go until the summit.

Mitchelton-Scott have their entire eight-man team on the front of the peloton but they're being helped out by a single Astana rider, who is the one setting tempo. The gap is down to 4'35".

Here's what awaits the riders - and fans - at Lagos de Covadonga...

Reminder of who's in the break...

It's fair to say that the polka dot jersey will probably change hands today. There are 43 points up for grabs and Thomas De Gendt has already taken three of them. Both summits of the Mirador del Fito offer 10pts and the Especial final climb has 20pts. As things are, Luis Angel Mate is on 64pts, De Gendt on 57pts, Ben King has 40pts, Bauke Mollema 34pts and Pierre Rolland 29pts. But King, Mollema and Rolland are all in this break, so it's nicely poised. Mate is the only rider to have worn the polka dot jersey in this race - but he's been ill these past few days.

Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) has a mechanical and needs assistance. Better now than on the final climb.

The gap for the leaders going onto the climb is 5'55" in homage to Charlotte Gainsbourg.

The break is onto the first of two ascents of the Cat.1 Mirador del Fito (7.1km at 7.7%). They go up the same way on both occasions but the first ascent includes an extra kilometre at the top before peeling down on a loop. When they return a second time, they come off it earlier before heading off to the final climb to the Covadonga lakes.

A reminder that there are four riders all within 47 seconds at the top of the standings with Simon Yates 20 seconds clear of Valverde, 25 seconds clear of Quintana and 47 seconds clear of Lopez. It should be a fierce battle out there today.

Great to see British debutant Tao Geoghegan Hart in the break. He's riding his first Grand Tour for Team Sky, who started the race promising with two second places for Michal Kwiatkowski and the Pole's subsequent stint in the red jersey. But two of their number - Dylan Van Baarle and Pavel Sivakov - withdrew yesterday on a day Kwiatkowski rode a lot off the front. But they have no genuine GC contenders now seeing that Kwiatko is 9'27" down and the Spaniard David de la Cruz is 6'57" down having been largely invisible during the race. So Geoghegan Hart will be off the leash today and left to ride to his own devices.

The break is over a tough uncategorised blip and are now on the descent en route to the valley ahead of the first of two ascents of the Mirador del Fito climb. Their advantage us up to five minutes.

So now we pick it up with that group holding a gap of 4'30" over the pack. The best placed rider in the break in terms of GC is George Bennett of LottoNL-Jumbo, but the New Zealander conceded seven minutes yesterday and is now 10 minutes in arrears. Some interesting names in the move including the double stage winner Ben King, the Frenchman Pierre Rolland - who was very active in the race's opening week - and the Dutchman Bauke Mollema, who has twice finished runner-up in this year's Vuelta.

Pace-setting by Mitchelton-Scott and Lotto Soudal - the teams of the red jersey and polka dot jersey elect - led the chase and managed to reel in the break. Then our 12-man move went clear to open up a gap of 1'30" after 40km.

Seven riders had a 25 second gap over the pack after 30 kilometres: Alexandre Geniez (AG2R-La Mondiale), Brent Bookwalter (BMC Racing Team), Michal Kwiatkowski (Team Sky), Simon Clarke (Education First-Drapac), Jonathan Castroviejo, Sergio Henao (Team Sky) and Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo).

On the Cat.3 Alto de Santo Emiliano (6.1km at 4.7%) it was the Belgian Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Soudal) who took maximum points ahead of Kwiatkowski and Rafal Majka (Bora-Hansgrohe). Those three points put De Gendt within 7pts of the polka dot jersey of Luis Angel Mate (Cofidis).

Before we go all-in with the live, let's have a little run through of what happened over the first couple of hours today. It was another fast start and the Polish champion Michael Kwiatkowski (Team Sky) was among those who tried his luck early on - as he did yesterday - on the first climb of the day.

We join the stage LIVE now with a group of 12 riders holding a gap of almost four minutes over the peloton. They have completed the first climb and a series of uncategorised climbs. They are: Ivan Garcia Cortina (Bahrain-Merida), Nicolas Roche (BMC Racing Team), Imanol Erviti (Movistar), Ben King (Dimension Data), Pierre Rolland (Education First-Drapac), George Bennett, Danny Van Poppel (LottoNL-Jumbo), Tao Geoghegan Hart (Team Sky), Bauke Mollema, Fabio Felline (Trek-Segafredo), Valerio Conti (UAE Team Emirates) and Nick Schultz (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA).

There were 166 riders at the start this morning following the withdrawal of Bjorg Lambrecht (Lotto Soudal). Despite his big crash yesterday, South Africa's Louis Meintjes (Dimension Data) carries on.

Now fewer than eight climbs – categorised or otherwise – precede the stage showdown, contributing to a total of 4,000m of climbing, meaning Stage 14 could put pressure on many of the remaining sprinters to make the cut. On the eve of the second rest day, it could also provide the final nail in the GC coffin for many red jersey pretenders.

If some climbs mirror Ringo Starr's sense of rhythm, Lagos de Covadonga - with its series of steps - is not one of them. Since being unveiled in 1983, the iconic summit finish is to the Vuelta what Alpe d'Huez is to the Tour. The first two-thirds average well over 10% before a series of steps break up the climb as it nears the summit and passes the famous lakes of its name. After a downhill dip in the final kilometre there follows a final rise to the line – where Quintana won most recently in 2016.

Here's the profile for what will be deemed the queen stage by the purists, with the traditional finish at Lagos de Covadonga preceded by some hilly roads and a dual ascent of the Cat.1 Mirador del Fito climb (7.1km at 7.7%).