"It was more a stage for Purito than me, but judging by how I feel and if I can do a TT like in Poland, then my hopes are strong."

Those were the words of Astana's Fabio Aru after stage sixteen at the Vuelta a España. Aru started this morning with six teammates and they all stayed around him every kilometer of the race. Vanotti, Zeits, Sanchez, Cataldo, Landa, each in turn rode at the front, most notably Zeits, to eliminate riders from the main group and to create an elite group of leaders,

Aru gained important time in General Classification on Dutch rider Tom Dumoulin and now leads the dangerous time trialist by 1:50. The peloton rests for the second day on Tuesday and resumes competition in Burgos on Wednesday with a 38km individual time trial.

In last month's Tour de Pologne Aru and Zeits both finished Top-20 in the 25km ITT at the end of a week of World Tour racing from Warsaw to Krakow via the Tatra mountains.

Aru contained Joaquim Rodriguez on the stage and gave up the race leader's Red Jersey by 1 second, a true reflection of the open competition remaining with just five stages to go in the 2015 Vuelta.

“It was a good result," he added. "It was a very hard climb.  There is a very important time trial on Wednesday so being second today does not mean anything. That’s how it is. I have to recover, try and get something back in the legs tomorrow, and then see. Tomorrow I'll go check the time trial course. Purito’s attack was really strong. I tried to follow but I could not. I’m focused on the time trial now.

"It was difficult. I tried my best on the last climb. To be honest in the last kilometres I was just following Purito – he was going very fast, we tried to control him, but we weren’t able to match him today, we offer him a lot of respect. It was a big stage."