Ezequiel Mosquera produced a heroic ride to win the penultimate stage of the Vuelta cycle race, but his efforts were not enough to give him the overall lead of the race, which will be now almost certainly be won by Italian Vincenzo Nibali.
Saturday's penultimate stage took the riders on a 172 kilometer tour of the mountains north of Madrid, ending on the special category climb.
The Bola del Mundo is a ski-station that can only be reached by a single rough road and the three kilometer ascent has an average gradient with ramps of up to 22 percent.
Before reaching the Bola del Mundo the riders had to previously climb the first category Puerto de Leon and twice go up the legendary Puerto de Navacerrada on a day complicated by falling temperatures.
That made a brutal selection of the race field and the closing kilometers came down to a thrilling head to head battle between second placed Mosquera and Nibali, who had started the day with a vital 50 second advantage over his rival.
Knowing he had to take time of his rival, Mosquera attacked hard on the Bola de Mundo, riding away into the mist among the cheering fans.
Nibali saw the race escaping him and dug deep to give chase on a road surface made up of concrete blocks and slowly he began to eat into Mosquera' s advantage.
With a kilometer remaining Mosquera was 14 seconds ahead, but that was pulled back to nine and then just seven, before Nibali latched onto the Spaniard' s back wheel.
The Italian looked favorite to take the stage, but either lacked the strength to overtake or believed that Mosquera deserved a consolation prize and he finished directly behind the Spaniard with the same time.
That gives Nibali a 43 second lead, which will almost certainly be his winning margin at the end of Sunday.
Tomorrow's last stage is a short 80 kilometers that will finish with a sprint in Madrid. Tradition dictates that nobody attacks the leader and any attack would be bound to end in failure in an easy-to-control stage.