Ireland's Ryan Mullen endured Giro d'Italia frustration as cramp with 10km to go scuppered his time-trial stage hopes heading into Rovereto.
Trek Segafredo's Mullen looked to be in contention as he headed for the business end of the 34.5km course but he was affected inside the final third and eventually crossed in 41:09 to take 15th.
"Left it all out there today," Mullen tweeted afterwards. "Doing a TT on stage 16 was very interesting. And by interesting I mean really s**t."
Simon Yates cleared a significant hurdle in his bid for overall glory as the English rider kept the leader's pink jersey after today's time trial, which was won by Australian Rohan Dennis.
When you get cramp with 10k to go pic.twitter.com/Bv6IUbqSoa
— Ryan Mullen (@ryanmullen9) May 22, 2018
Yates' time of 41:37 was only 22nd on the day but enough for the 25-year-old Mitchelton-Scott rider to keep the race lead by 56 seconds from defending champion Tom Dumoulin of Team Sunweb.
Dutchman Dumoulin, the world time trial champion, took 75 seconds out of Yates, but had started the day two minutes and 11 seconds down in second place.
Team Sky's Chris Froome recorded the fifth best time on the day with a 40:35, which sees him move up to fourth overall, three minutes and 50 seconds down, after Frenchman Thibaut Pinot of Groupama-FDJ struggled mightily.
BMC Racing's Dennis, who won with a time of 40 minutes exactly, moves up to sixth overall with his first career Giro d'Italia stage win.
Sam Bennettt finished 116th for Bora Hansgrohe after clocking 44:30. Nicolas Roche pulled out of the Giro two days ago.
