Jay Vine has come agonisingly close to the greatest time trial win of his career and a hat-trick of stage wins at this year's Vuelta a Espana, the Australian star missing out by less than a second in Vallodolid.

Producing a scintillating, lung-busting effort over the pan-flat 12.2km course on Thursday, Vine ended up losing out to Italian time trialling great Filippo Ganna by just 0.9 seconds.

"To come second to Ganna it's incredible, just beaten by one of the best time trialists in the world. Nothing more that I could do," shrugged Vine, after covering the course in 13mins 01.79sec at a staggering average of 56.179kph.

A fraction quicker, he could even have been celebrating his third win of what's so far been a fantastic Vuelta for the 29-year-old Queenslander, who's set to win the King

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