Veteran stage 16 winner Frank Schleck argued that his win on the toughest summit finish of the Vuelta a Espana came down to character and courage after he broke away some three kilometres from the finish line at La Ermita de Alba for a lone victory.
In what is proving to be a very successful Vuelta for Trek Factory Racing, Schleck claimed his team's third stage win of the race on Monday, and his first in a Grand Tour since Schleck captured a stage Le Grand Bornand in the 2009 Tour de France, making this his biggest win in six years.
Part of a day long breakaway that gained up to a 22 minute advantage at one point, Schleck said he had "no idea that I would win, but that kind of gap was definitely in our favour. I thought I had a really good chance."
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Schleck then set the pace on the Alto de la Cobertoria, the second last climb, to whittle the break down to himself and Colombian Rodolfo Torres before testing his much younger rival with two or three gentler digs on the lower slopes of the final climb. Then with a sudden stomp of the pedals, some three kilometres from the line, the older of the Schleck brothers left Torres in his wake and forged away to his first ever Vuelta stage win, at the age of 35.
"I came here to fight for the general classification but I had two or three crashes early on," Schleck said, "and that changed my tactics. Yesterday [stage 15] the team told me to slow down a bit so I could have some more energy today, and that worked well.
"I couldn't do the Tour because of health problems and I had a lot of crashes in the first part of the season. But after five weeks of altitude training, I was in good shape.
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