Alberto Contador of Tinkoff Saxo has won the 69th Vuelta a España.
The Spaniard was defending a lead of 1.37 over Chris Froome going into the final 9.7km time trial in Santiago de Compostela.
Guardini was first down the ramp but it was Jimmy Engoulvent of Europcar who set the early time to beat of 11.30 on very wet roads.
Adriano Malori of Movistar finished in 11.12 as self preservation became the order of the day, taking an eight second lead over Jesse Sergent of Trek Factory Racing who had taken over from Engoulvent in the stage lead.
Chris Froome got underway at 20.16 local time and two minutes later, the race leader Alberto Contador went down the ramp with a bit of a slide, knowing that a safe finish was all he had to do.
Dan Martin of Garmin Sharp finished in 13.06 for a seventh place finish on the general classification as Froome and Contador went on their way.
Alejandro Valverde finished in 12.07 only 55 seconds behind Malori before Froome came home in 12.25, knowing that his place on the podium as runner up was assured.
Contador cruised home to huge cheers in a town which was celebrating the 800th anniversary of the visit of St Francis of Assisi in 12.52 to take the overall victory and let Adrian Malori have the stage win.
Malori said to Eurosport: "This was a great race it was huge for me to take a stage victory. There were some big names in this time trial and I can take pride in this victory. I did not expect to win but I have done and I am pleased with it."
Stage Result
1 Malori 11.12
2 Sergent +8
3 Dennis +9
4 Kiryienka +17
5 Engoulvent +18
6 Chernetskiy
7 Bodnar
8 Lutsenko
9 Stuyven+19
10 Gaudin
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION
1 Contador;
2 Froome +1'10;
3 Valverde +1'50;
4 Rodriguez +3'25;
5 Aru +4'48;
6 Sanchez +9'30;
7 Martin +10'38
John Degenkolb wins the Point Classification
Luis Leon Sanchez wins the Mountain Classifcation
Alberto Contador wins the Combination classification