VaE: Philip Gilbert takes his second victory in La Vuelta while Vincenzo Nibali hold on to Red

Philip Gilbert took his second victory in this year’s la Vuelta a Espana after a huge sprint in to the town of Toledo.

With just over 3km to go several riders launched an attack including Luis Leon Sanchez. They managed to pull out a small gap of around five seconds, but they were caught 1km later. The attacks broke up the peloton leaving the sprinters behind.

This allowed the explosive Belgian to start a 500 metre sprint to the line, but he was almost caught by Tyler Farrar who had survived the earlier escape attempts. Vincenzo Nibali managed to come in not too far behind the Belgian to keep a 50’ gap ahead of Ezequiel Mosquera.

Today’s stage was the longest of this year’s Vuelta and a mixture of terrain and the riders legs were tested immediately with a second category climb. The rest of the stage was very undulating, but gradually moved down and a slight incline in the last kilometre.

A break away was formed after the first and only classified climb of the day. It was Dominik Roels, who was in the break yesterday and Josep Jufre who came of the front of the bunch first. They were soon joined by Manuel Ortega and Xavier Florencio; the four men managed to pull out a massive gap very quickly.

Despite holding such a big gap at one stage the peloton were ready for another sprint finish and they were finally caught with 13km to go.

Sitting 8^th place Nicolas Roche had some problems early on with a puncture, but after a quick wheel change he made it back on the peloton. This time he wasn’t left behind on the hills like this year’s Tour de France.

Any hopes the Frank Schleck of taking the yellow jersey in the last few stages were dealt a blow today when Fabian Cancellara got off the bike just over 100km in to the stage. The big Swiss rider hasn’t been on the best of form for the past few days and lost out to Peter Velits and Denis Menchov in the time-trial on Wednesday.

Cancellara is still to confirm whether or not he will compete in the World Championships in a couple of weeks. There is also a lot of speculation surrounding a possible move to the new Schleck team despite still holding a contract with Saxo Bank. If he decides to stay at the team run by Bjarne Riis he will be working for Alberto Contador with the Spaniard joining the team next season.

Positions remained almost the same at the top of the general classification the only big change was Roche moving in to seventh after he lost a bunch of time in Wednesday's time-trial.

Tomorrow’s stage will bring us ever closer to Madrid starting in San Martín de Valdeiglesias and finishing up in Bola del Mundo. The stage contains a third category climb and two first category climbs and then just to add insult to injury it all ends with a mountain top finish.