Were it not for his crashes in the Chianti time trial at the end of the opening week, there could well have been another dark horse in the reckoning for final overall victory at this Giro d'Italia. As it stands, Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha) remains a distinct threat for a place on the final podium in Turin after he placed third on Tuesday's breathless stage 16 to Andalo.
Zakarin was among the chief aggressors as the leading group fragmented on the day's first climb, the Passo della Mendola, with maglia rosa Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo) seeing fit to shut down his moves in person.
When Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) attacked 500 metres from the summit, Zakarin didn't need an invitation to follow, bridging across with Kruijswijk and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar), though they were still 65 kilometres and two climbs from the finish line.
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That elite group shed Nibali as the gradient stiffened on Fai della Paganella, and they gained time on their chasers on the shallow final haul to Andalo, where Valverde was an emphatic winner in the three-up sprint.
A tired Zakarin almost ground to a halt in the finishing straight, placing third on the stage, 8 seconds down on Valverde, but his day's work was enough to lift him to 5th overall, 4:50 behind Kruijswijk, but a mere 7 seconds behind Nibali.
"For me, Ilnur was the strongest today. He only blew up in the end because he'd pulled on the front all day," directeur sportif Dimitri Konyshev said from the driver's seat of the Katusha team car afterwards.
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