Movistar Team completes time trial exam in Salamanca and keeps top-10 chances alive with Pardilla and Bruseghin before Wednesday's next mountain stage, following Tuesday's rest day The 47k individual time trial in the 2011 Vuelta a España left the two references from Movistar Team for the overall classification, Marzio Bruseghin and Sergio Pardilla, with a good chance to contest the top-ten after minimizing losses with the race's new leader, Brit-Kenyan Chris Froome (SKY), 2nd in Salamanca behind Germany's Tony Martin (THR). The Spaniard, in his first real challenge into a long ITT during his debut in the Spaish grandtour, finished barely three minutes behind the first of the favourites -same distance in the GC, where he's now 15th-, while the Italian, regular in all time checks, was a step behind the day's top-20 by making a minute faster than his teammate from the telephone squad to jump into 11th overall, 2.15 off the red jersey's pace. The team is now departing for Galician roads in a long transfer prior to a well-deserved first rest day, preceeding the mountain-top finish in Cabeza de Manzaneda on Wednesday.

Marzio Bruseghin: “Should I have done a minute faster, it would have been a very good time trial for me. There was a section, the central one in the ITT where, due to reasons I can’t work out, I couldn’t gain speed and was felling myself really slow. I got up riding fast again in the finale, but I think I lost too much at the end. Theoretically, I’m a rider who responds better as days go by, but today was the stage where I had to take time over the climbers, and I couldn’t make the difference I was expecting.”

Sergio Pardilla: “Today’s overview must be positive. You can’t compare yourself to Tony Martin, but with the other climbers, in such a long ITT as this one, I think I did well losing little time with them. I had to keep a good pace but not burning myself, because the time trial would end up being too long, just as it happened. The goal was riding under an hour and we made it. If I was feeling well and forces were still there, I knew beforehand that the hardest part of the race for me would be the first one, with explosive finishes, nervous stages and this long TT. Now it’s the point where I should be gaining terrain: the upcoming stages suit me well, I like them and already recon’d them with my teammates.”