Jonas Vingegaard victorious again on stage 16 of La Vuelta, as both the Dane and Primoz Roglic gap Sepp Kuss

Jonas Vingegaard has done it again, repeating his stage win success from stage 13 with another solo, summit finish victory at the 2023 Vuelta a Espana, crossing the line full of emotion on a day dedicated to Nathan Van Hooydonck.

Stage 16 is a very short day through the rugged Spanish north, with a brutal summit finish. An untraditional stage format, but the day will be decided in the ascent to Bejes where the gradients will reach up often above 10% for almost five kilometres.

The fight for the breakaway looked to have come to an unexpectedly early end when a group of ten riders went clear including Kaden Groves, Andreas Kron, Romain Bardet and Romain Gregoire among others.

INEOS Grenadiers had missed the break however, and were not happy about that fact. The entirety of the INEOS team took to the front of the peloton and chased very hard for around 20km, eventually bringing the break back.

Then, with just under 60km to go, the break finally formed again. Six riders with Groves involved again alongside Max Poole, Mattia Cattaneo, Julius van den Berg, Nicolas Prudhomme and Joel Nicolau.

Sadly for the break, it seemed as if Jumbo-Visma had goals of another stage win and as such did not allow much of a gap to grow.

As expected, Groves took maximum points at the intermediate sprint, consolidating his lead in the Green Jersey classification. Immediately afterwards, the Aussie sat up and waited for the peloton.

With just over 10km remaining, the break was swallowed up by the peloton.

At 5km to go, the road began to climb upward towards the finish line with Jumbo-Visma immediately to the front of the peloton. Straight away riders began to drop out the peloton.

With 4km to Vingegaard launched his assault, emulating what happened on stage 13. Surprisingly, Finn Fisher-Black was the rider making the most effort in a chase, surprising because none of the other podium contenders had made that move.

Vingegaard's lead was only growing outwards and as he entered the final 1.5km there was a minute's advantage for the Dane as suddenly the Red Jersey was in the balance.

Finally, with just over a kilometre to go, Joao Almeida accelerated the chase group containing the likes of Sepp Kuss, Primoz Roglic and Juan Ayuso.

The next rider to attack clear though was Primoz Roglic and the Slovenian began hunting down his teammate with Kuss still not showing his face on the front.

The stage win wasn't in doubt though, that was for Vingegaard. Fisher-Black held on for second, Wout Poels third as the time began counting down to Vingegaard's Jumbo-Visma teammate, Kuss with the American keeping hold of the Red Jersey.

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