Stage 16

The road

At the start

The Cuitu Negru, and twenty-four per cent

Antonio Piedra took Covadonga out of the break; behind him Froome cracked and lost third place to Valverde, while Rodríguez and Contador arrived together with twenty-two seconds still between them. Today is the third summit finish in a row and the newest climb of the lot: the Cuitu Negru, a concrete extension above the Valgrande-Pajares ski station that touches twenty-four per cent.

How it was won

1. 1142 km to go

   Cataldo and De Gendt slip away

   Sky spend the first hour closing everything down, and then on the descent of the Cabruñana two riders clip off the front and are gone. Nobody worries about them. By the next climb they have a quarter of an hour.

2. 282 km to go

   A quarter of an hour, and a fight for third

   De Gendt leads Cataldo over the San Lorenzo. Minutes later Moncoutié attacks the bunch for the third-place points and is beaten to them by Simon Clarke, who holds the mountains jersey for another day.

3. 341 km to go

   Euskaltel start the chase

   With Igor Antón to set up, Euskaltel share the pace-making with Saxo Bank and the two leaders' quarter of an hour drops to nine minutes by the summit of the Cobertoria. Behind, Nicolas Roche is already yo-yoing.

4. 46 km to go

   Contador attacks the Cuitu Negru

   Pires, Paulinho and Majka ride themselves to a standstill, Hernández takes one turn, and Contador goes with six kilometres left. Only Rodríguez, Valverde and the twenty-two-year-old Nairo Quintana hold him — and over the next five kilometres Contador attacks a dozen more times.

5. 52 km to go

   Twenty-four per cent

   The last two kilometres of the Cuitu Negru go past twenty per cent and then past twenty-four, and on them Dario Cataldo grinds away from Thomas De Gendt at something close to walking pace. He crosses the line seven seconds up and slumps over his handlebars, too destroyed to raise an arm properly.

6. 6At the line

   Rodríguez was bluffing all along

   In the final five hundred metres, at ten kilometres an hour, Contador's face racked with pain, he attacks one last time — and Rodríguez shoots past him, takes two seconds on the road and four in bonuses, and rides away up the wall having spent the entire climb pretending to be in trouble. Twenty-eight seconds in red, with Valverde at 2:04.

The result