Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) once again won the sprint of the group of favourites in the first big mountain stage of the Vuelta to finish 3rd and keep his 4th place on GC. However, the Spaniard lost plenty of time to stage winner and new overall leader Chris Horner (Radioshack) and now admits that the veteran American is a dangerous rival.

Alejandro Valverde once again finished in the main group of favourites on the first big mountain stage of this year's Vuelta and once again he once the sprint for a minor placing. On the first occasions, his time losses to the riders ahead haven't been too big but today Chris Horner opened a massive gap to his rivals, distancing Vincenzo Nibali (Astana)  by 48 seconds and the Valverde group by 1.02.

Valverde remains in 4th overall but now finds himself 1.02 behind Horner. Valverde admitted that the performance of the 41-year old had been a surprise, just as it was when he won his first stage last Monday.

"I had already stated that today was the stage where we would be really seeing who were the biggest candidates for the Vuelta overall, with two real climbs along the way," he said. "Horner was a surprise, but I don't think it was too much, because he was already riding well - the time gap might have been it, a minute is quite a difference. When he won his first stage, he already proved strong, but he won convincingly today."

Until now Rodriguez, Nibali and Valverde have marked each other closely but it may now be time for them to regard Horner as a dangerous rival.

"The rest of us - Nibali, Purito (Rodriguez, ed.), Basso, Pinot or Roche - we're all pretty much close to each other right now," he added. "Nibali got a bit of a gap today, but we're all quite strong. I don't know if the current situation will change the race's development, as Nibali, Purito and myself looked to each other a bit, but we also knew we weren't the only podium contenders, and everyone could see it today."

5km from the summit, Valverde was in difficulty and briefly lost contact with the main group. However, he recovered and made it back to his main rivals to finish safely in 3rd place.

"I dropped a bit with 5k to go because I knew the climb really well - we had trained a lot on these roads and I knew I had to set my own pace," he said. "I took some breath and could close the gap again; even though I suffered a lot, I found myself better after that. As I'm saying, it was the first real mountain stage today, and there's still a long way to go. I have to thank and congratulate my team because they were splendid today once again."

Valverde now heads into his first rest day. Another crucial stage is coming up on Wednesday with the 38,8km time trial and this will make tomorrow's day off a complicated affair.

"We're really happy to get that rest day, though it will be a bit more active than usual since we have the TT on Wednesday," he said. "It seems like a hard time trial, so it shouldn't be bad for me. We'll put some guts on it and suffer as much as we can."

Starting at 13.10 CEST you can follow the time trial in its entirety on CyclingQuotes.com/live.