Steven Kruijswijk of the Netherlands stayed in pink after coming second to Spain's Alejandro Valverde in the 16th stage of the Giro d'Italia Tuesday, a mountainous 132-km run from Bressanone to Andalo.
Pre-race favourite Vincenzo Nibali finished the stage 1'46" behind the winning trio and dropped one place to fourth in the general classification, 4'43" behind Kruijswijk.
Nibali's Astana team said they would run some tests to see what was behind his lower-than-expected performance.
Kruijswijk is 3' ahead of Colombia's Esteban Chaves and 3'23" ahead of Alejandro Valverde. Russia's Ilnur Zakarin is fifth, 4'50" behind.
In a three-man sprint with his two companions in a breakaway that started 16 km out, Valverde beat Kruijswijk and Zakarin.
Seconds after the stage finish, Valverde said: "It's a good day for me as I move up in the overall ranking, although I wanted a stage win as a gift for the mechanics, soigneurs, directors, my family… all the people who have helped me overcome the day I had on Saturday because of the altitude. It was only one bad day though. I rode the time trial as well as I could have hoped. We wanted to break the race up today. It's a great feeling to win for the first time at the Giro".
The pink jersey said: "Second yet again! I wanted to give my team a win but it's an ideal situation for the Maglia Rosa as I'm now three minutes ahead of Esteban Chaves and the others. I was feeling really good so I had to make the best of this short but really hard stage. I had to follow Nibali when he attacked early in the stage. I didn't expect so much action the day after the rest day".
How they finished: 1. Alejandro Valverde (Spagna) in 2h 58' 54" (12" bonus) 2. Steven Kruijswijk (Olanda) s.t. (6" bonus) 3. Ilnur Zakarin (Russia) at 8" (4" bonus) 4. Diego Ulissi (Italia) at 37" (3" bonus) 5. Bob Jungels (Lussemburgo) s.t.
6. David Lopez Garcia (Spagna) at 38" 7. Sergey Firsanov (Russia) s.t.
8. Esteban Chaves (Colombia) at 42" 9. Rafal Majka (Polonia) at 50" 10. Domenico Pozzovivo (Italia) at 1'47" 11. Vincenzo Nibali (Italia) s.t. General classification: 1. Steven Kruijswijk (Netherlnds) in 63h 40' 10" 2. Esteban Chaves (Colombia) 3' 00" 3. Alejandro Valverde (Spain) 3' 23" 4. Vincenzo Nibali (Italy) 4' 43" 5. Ilnur Zakarin (Russia) 4' 50" 6. Rafal Majka (Poland) 5' 34" 7. Bob Jungels (Luxembourg) 7' 57" 8. Andrey Amador (Costa Rica) 8' 53" 9. Domenico Pozzovivo (Italy) 10' 05" 10. Kanstantsin Siutsou (Belarus) 11' 03"
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