Stage 16

The road

At the start

Formigal, thirty-seven years on

The queen stage changed nothing at the top: Nibali by fifty seconds from Horner, 1:42 from Valverde. Today is short — a hundred and forty-six kilometres out of Graus — and finishes with fifteen kilometres of climbing to Aramón Formigal, where the Vuelta held its very first summit finish thirty-seven years ago.

How it was won

1. 147 km to go

   The move Movistar miss

   Nobody gets away for fifty kilometres. Then, on the Cotefablo, nine do — Txurruka, Flecha, Nerz, Sørensen, Martínez, Sijmens, Huzarski, Kohler and, dangerously, Rigoberto Urán. Movistar are not in it, and start throwing riders forward to fix that.

2. 227 km to go

   Euskaltel come to Astana's aid

   Two and a half minutes with twenty-seven kilometres left becomes 3:10 inside a single kilometre. Euskaltel, in their last season and chasing the teams' classification, take up the work Astana cannot do alone.

3. 39 km to go

   Barguil goes from nine kilometres out

   He has been bouncing up to every move all afternoon like a young dog. With nine kilometres of Formigal left he attacks alone — a climb with pitches that vary enough to punish anyone who goes early — and opens thirty-four seconds.

4. 43 km to go

   Nibali cracks

   Valverde attacks and the red jersey, with his last teammate in front of him, only has to control it. Then Rodríguez bolts and links with a teammate from the break, and Valverde, Horner and Pinot go after him — and for the first time in this race Vincenzo Nibali cannot go with anybody. Three kilometres from the top he is losing seconds he cannot spare.

5. 51 km to go

   Urán arrives, and attacks at once

   Txurruka, Nerz and Urán have been eating into Barguil's lead all the way up. The Colombian catches him with a kilometre left and goes straight past — and the twenty-one-year-old, who by every rule should be finished, simply holds the wheel and lets him ride.

6. 6At the line

   Barguil hangs on and wins

   Urán opens what must feel like the winning sprint at a hundred metres, and Barguil comes past him inside the last few. A second stage of this Vuelta. Behind, Nibali has lost twenty-two seconds to Horner and leads him by twenty-eight.

The result