BURY cyclist Simon Yates unleashed a blistering late attack yesterday to claim his first ever stage victory in a Grand Tour, winning the sixth stage of the Vuelta a Espana by 20 seconds.

The 24-year-old's Australian team ORICA-BikeExchange led a charge to reel in a breakaway before he pounced in the closing stages of the 163.2km race to Ribeira Sacra.

Yates – whose twin brother Adam Yates won the white jersey for best young rider at this year's Tour de France – took the initiative and dropped his competitors as he accelerated away to a superb solo victory.

"The team did some great work in the beginning and set things up really well for me,” said Yates. "We wanted to go in there and try to make a hard race. There were lots of twists and turns in the finale, but I managed to take my opportunity and I’m very happy with the result.

"The roads were pretty difficult there at the end but fortunately I timed my attack to perfection, it was a really hot day but it worked out very well for us in the end.”

The former Derby High School pupil and Bury Clarion member, who returned from a four-month drugs ban in July after his team made an "administrative error" over an asthma inhaler, moved into 10th place in the general classification, 1min 28secs behind leader Darwin Atapuma.

Sport director Neil Stephens praised the superb performance of Yates and the team.

"Fantastic result,” said Stephens. "We’d done a detailed reconnaissance of the stage beforehand and we knew that it was going to be difficult, but you can never be sure what the other teams are going to do. So we decided to go on the front foot and liven things up.

"It wasn’t really the plan for Simon (Yates) to attack but the decision was made by the guys on the road and as the situation progressed we wanted to try and nullify the threat of the other teams and it ended up being a fantastic effort and win from Simon.

"It was a great team performance and the boys worked very hard but they also raced with intelligence and knew exactly when to ease off which proved to be important for the finale.”

Yates's remit going into the Vuelta was to target stage wins and support team-mate Esteban Chaves's bid for the general classification.

Chaves is currently 38 seconds down on the leader in fifth place overall, eight seconds behind Britain's Tour de France champion Chris Froome.

Today's seventh stage is the last day in the stunning region of Galicia, covering 158.5km from Maceda to Puebla de Sanabria. Another hilly day includes three categorised climbs before a long descent to the finish.