Astana Pro Team rider Vincenzo Nibali was untouchable in the Queen stage of the Vuelta a Espana on Sunday, and leads the overall classification into the final week of the race.

Nibali finished the 224km stage from Andorra into Peyragudes, four categorized climbs and a border crossing into France, all in the company of his closest challengers, with none of them able to advance in pursuit of the Italian.

Alexandre Geniez of France won the longest stage of the Vuelta, jumping out of his final breakaway group to victory. Nibali finished fourth, leading his elite group of five riders to the line 3:20 behind the winner. Nibali leads the GC by 50 seconds over Chris Horner and 1:42 over Alejandro Valverde.

"The breakaway with 28 riders began right after the start, and then it started raining on the first climb. So we went to work." said DS Alexandr Shefer to Astana’s webpage.

"Closest guy on GC was 11 minutes, which wasn’t a problem. But we still chased, and after 14 stages and these hard days in the mountains, chasing hurts everybody. But at least it wasn't cold today. 13-14 degrees on top, not like yesterday. We're one of two teams with all our riders left in the race and each one of them is important on the road to Madrid. Tomorrow is still one more really hard mountain stage before the rest day," Shefer said.