The 2015 Vuelta a España was a three-week Grand Tour cycling race that took place principally in Spain between 22 August and 13 September 2015; two stages also took place partly or wholly in Andorra. The first ten stages took the race from Spain's southern Mediterranean coast to Castellón de la Plana on the eastern coast. Stage 1 was a team time trial that took place around the Costa del Sol beach resort of Marbella on 22 August. The day before the stage took place, its route was deemed to be dangerous by the race commissaires; the times did not therefore count for the general classification and several teams rode the stage slowly. The second stage was therefore the first whose times counted; it was the first of nine summit finishes in the Vuelta and was won by Esteban Chaves (Orica–GreenEDGE), who took the leader's red jersey. Stages 3, 4 and 5 were hilly sprint stages, won by Peter Sagan (Tinkoff–Saxo), Alejandro Valverde (Movistar Team) and Caleb Ewan (Orica–GreenEDGE) respectively. Tom Dumoulin (Team Giant–Alpecin) took the red jersey after the fifth stage because of a split in the peloton at the finish line. The race returned to the mountains on stage 6 with a third-category summit finish. This was again won by Chaves, who therefore regained the race lead. He retained this the following day on the first first-category summit finish of the race. This was won by riders from a breakaway; the significant general classification changes were the several seconds won by Fabio Aru (Astana) and the time lost by Chris Froome (Team Sky), the winner of the 2015 Tour de France. Another hilly stage followed: this was won by Jasper Stuyven (Trek Factory Racing) from a sprint, despite breaking his scaphoid earlier in the stage. Several other riders crashed during the stage, including Sagan, who was hit by a race motorbike. The ninth stage was the first before the Vuelta's first rest day and was another first-category summit finish. It was won by Dumoulin just ahead of Froome; Dumoulin took back the red jersey. After a transfer to Andorra and the rest day, the riders took on a very difficult stage at the beginning of the second week. This involved six categorised climbs in just 138 kilometres (86 mi) of racing, with very little flat road between them. The stage was won by Mikel Landa (Astana), with his teammate Fabio Aru moving into the race lead and Rodríguez moving into second, with Dumoulin third. Chris Froome (Team Sky), who had crashed at the very beginning of the stage and ridden the rest of it with a broken foot, withdrew from the race the following morning. (en)