Tuesday 24 May 2016 17:35, UK
Steven Kruijswijk extended his lead of the Giro d’Italia with another imperious performance on a mountainous 16th stage won by Alejandro Valverde.
Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo), Valverde (Movistar) and Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha) all escaped from a small group of favourites on the penultimate climb of the day, with 15km to go, and the Spaniard subsequently sprinted to the first Giro stage win of his career.
Kruijswijk followed in second place and in doing so stretched his overall lead over closest challenger Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) to three minutes, after the Colombian became distanced earlier in the day and finished 42 seconds down in eighth.
But the stage's biggest loser was Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), who couldn't follow the decisive attack and finally crossed the line 1min 47sec down in 11th place, all but ending his hopes of overall victory.
The Italian is now 4min 43sec down on Kruijswijk in the general classification and has been replaced in third place by Valverde, who is 3min 23sec adrift of the pink jersey.
Valverde said: "We really wanted to break the race up and we wanted create some mischief. That's what we did. It's a good day for me, as I move up in the overall ranking."
Kruijswijk, who has now finished second in each of the past three stages, added: "I wanted to give my team a win, but it's an ideal situation for the maglia rosa [the pink jersey], as I'm now three minutes ahead of Esteban Chaves and the others.
"I was feeling really good so I had to make the best of this short but really hard stage. I had to follow Nibali when he attacked early in the stage. I didn't expect so much action the day after the rest day."
Nibali had initially looked to be back on form following his torrid displays over the weekend, attacking several times on the first of the 132km day's three categorised climbs as he looked to put Kruijswijk under pressure.
Chaves was dropped and never regained contact with the front of the race, but despite a lack of team-mates to help him, the superb Kruijswijk calmly chased down every attack and then easily followed when Valverde made his move with 15km to go.
The Giro continues on Wednesday with a 196km 17th stage from Molveno to Cassano d'Adda, which should end in a sprint. Find out more about the route in our race guide.
Stage 16 result
1 Alejandro Valverde (Esp) Movistar, 2:58:54
2 Steven Kruijswijk (Ned) LottoNL-Jumbo, same time
3 Ilnur Zakarin (Rus) Katusha, +8sec
4 Diego Ulissi (Ita) Lampre-Merida, +37
5 Bob Jungels (Lux) Etixx - Quick-Step, st
6 David Lopez (Esp) Team Sky, +38
7 Sergey Firsanov (Rus) Gazprom-RusVelo, st
8 Esteban Chaves (Col) Orica-GreenEdge, +42
9 Rafal Majka (Pol) Tinkoff, +50
10 Domenico Pozzovivo (Ita) Ag2r-La Mondiale, +1:47
Selected other
11 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Astana, st
General classification
1 Steven Kruijswijk (Ned) LottoNL-Jumbo, 63:40:10
2 Esteban Chaves (Col) Orica-GreenEdge, +3:00
3 Alejandro Valverde (Esp) Movistar, +3:23
4 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Astana, +4:43
5 Ilnur Zakarin (Rus) Katusha, +4:50
6 Rafal Majka (Pol) Tinkoff, +5:34
7 Bob Jungels (Lux) Etixx - Quick-Step, +7:57
8 Andrey Amador (Cos) Movistar, +8:53
9 Domenico Pozzovivo (Ita) Ag2r-La Mondiale, +10:05
10 Kanstantsin Siutsou (Blr) Dimension Data, +11:03
