Warren Barguil lost a bit of time in today's queen stage but managed to defend his position in the overall top 10. However, the Frenchman was disappointed and felt that he had used to much energy by riding aggressively in yesterday's stage.

Warren Barguil has had another impressive finishing climb at the Vuelta a España to finish the stage in 11th place and with it he jumps up another place in the overall classification to ninth.

The 16th stage was the queen stage of the race with five categorised climbs, including four first category ascents. Barguil had to be on his guard all day, and he was safely in the front group at the base of the final climb. After attacks from the GC leaders split the front group he set his own pace to finish 1’51″ down on the stage winner, Alberto Contador (Tinkoff – Saxo).

As ever there was a hard fight for the day’s breakaway and on the first climb of the race even the GC contenders were attacking each other. Barguil and the team had to be alert to the groups forming early on but in the valley after the first climb of the day normality was restored as 13 riders started to build an advantage over the peloton who lowered their arms and rolled gently towards the day’s second climb.

The race behind the break was controlled but hard and over the different climbs that the stage threw at it, the peloton gradually lost riders out the back forming a select peloton by the base of the long final ascent of over 16km.

The pace was controlled for the first half before Chris Froome (Sky) put in his attack and pulled clear with Contador. These two rode away from the rest as behind riders fought to limit their losses all over the road. The riders came over the finish line in ones and twos, and Barguil came home in a respectable 11th place, finishing just under two minutes down on stage winner Contador who attacked Froome in the final 500m to take the win and comfort his overall race lead.

Behind, green jersey wearer John Degenkolb finished safely within the time limit in the grupetto, together with Koen De Kort, Chad Haga, Ramon Sinkeldam, while the others finished in different groups up the road.

“I’m a bit disappointed," Barguil said. "But we can’t be on top form every day. On Sunday, maybe I should have kept some energy for this stage. But I enjoyed the race, that’s what matters mostly. I took my rhythm at the bottom of La Farrapona. I’ll need to ride cautiously in the third week to make the best overall classification I can.”

Birthday boy Koen De Kort said after the stage: “That was probably one of my worst birthdays ever! The pace was very high all day and there were an incredible amount of altitude metres! Warren did a good job and I was in the rear group with John, Chad and Ramon making sure that we all made the time cut. In the end it was all good though!”