Frank Schleck of Trek Factory Racing has won the sixteenth stage of the 70th Vuelta a España.
A 185km stage from Luarca to Ermita del Alba.Quirós saw five riders in Omar Fraile (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), Carlos Verona (Etixx-Quick Step), Pierre Rolland (Europcar), Frank Schleck (Trek), and Rodolfo Torres (Team Colombia) get away to be joined by Moreno Moser (Cannondale-Garmin), Cyril Lemoine (Cofidis), Lawrence Warbasse (IAM Cycling) and George Bennett (LottoNL-Jumbo).
This group took a twelve minute lead with Fraile taking the five points on the Piedratecha climb before the peloton allowed the gap to go out to eighteen minutes and then twenty one minutes.
Onto the third climb of the seven on the stage - the category three Alto de la Cabruñana, which again Fraile took the maximum points on as the gap dropped slightly to twenty minutes.
Next was the Alto de Tenebredo climb and Fraile took the points yet again before they started on the category two Alto de Cordal with the break some seventeen minutes ahead.
The peloton dropped the gap to 13.25 with 32 kilometres left and again Fraile took the points on the Cordal climb.
Schleck, Torres, Bennett, Verona, Rolland, Lemoine, Fraile, Moser & Grmay pressed on through the sprint at whilst behind them, Leonardo Duque (Colombia) collided with Sylvain Chavanel and both went down.
The penultimate climb was the Alto de la Cobertoria and only Frank Schleck, Verona, Torres and George Bennett were left amongst the breakers which was reduced to just Schleck and Torres.
The peloton was no longer a peloton and comprised of a group of favourites which included the race leader Fabio Aru, Rodríguez, Moreno, Majka , Hansen,Quintana, Valverde, Nieve, Dumoulin, Pozzovivo, Chaves, Meintjes and Sicard amongst others.
Schleck and Rudolpho Torres went under the eight kilometre to go banner with a lead over ten and a half minutes and onto the final climb - the Alto Ermita de Alba.
Frank Schleck was dealing with the 14% ramps with ease but there was worse to come with gradients of 21.67%.
Schleck decided to tackle these gradients head on and the 35 year old pushed away from Torres.
Schleck had a two and a half kilometre lead to the group of favourites and cheered on by big crowds on the road, he kept pressing on up the single track road as Mikel Landa led the group of favourites with Tom Dumoulin handily placed.
Up the road he went and Franck Schleck took the win in 5.49.57. Torres finished second with Moser third and Bennett.
Joaquim Rodriquez of Katusha managed to get away and Aru had to respond on ramps of 30%. But there was a two second gap between them and it was Rodriquez who leads the race going into the rest day by a second.