Aitor Gonzalez restored Spanish pride with victory on stage 14 of the Tour de France on Sunday as record-chasing Lance Armstrong settled for a comfortable day back in the peloton.
Gonzalez, the 2002 Vuelta winner, broke clear from a leading group of 10 riders with six kilometres remaining of the 192.5 km stage from Carcassonne to Nimes to hand Spain its first stage victory at this year's Tour.
Overall leader Thomas Voeckler of France and five-times Tour champion Armstrong finished in the main field, 14 minutes and 12 seconds behind the Fassa Bortolo rider who is not a contender for victory in Paris.
Armstrong, who is bidding for a record sixth Tour title, is 22 seconds behind Voeckler -- who will wear the yellow jersey for the 11th day in succession in Tuesday's 180.5-km 15th stage from Valreas to the Alpine resort of Villard-de-Lans.
On a warm day in the south of France, most of the 160 riders left in the race, including Armstrong, were happy to sit back after two strenuous days in the Pyrenees.
"It went incredibly fast in the first 100 km before the breakaway," said Voeckler. "But when we saw that the most dangerous riders were more than 30 minutes adrift overall, we relaxed a bit in the second half of the stage."
Armstrong's domination since the beginning of the Tour has been hard to take for the Spaniards, who had yet to win a stage after more than two weeks of the Tour, a first since 1998.
The breakaway group included no riders with ambitions of overall victory, although it was not short of quality with former king of the mountains Santiago Botero of Colombia and Spanish time trial specialist Igor Gonzalez Galdeano.
With four Spaniards in the leading group, the opportunity for Spain to end its drought since the start was there and Gonzalez made no mistake, powering across the line 25 seconds ahead of Frenchmen Nicolas Jalabert and Christophe Mengin.
"I'm really happy. Things had not gone right for me on this Tour. I felt the moment was right to attack and I never looked back," said Gonzalez.
