Stage 7

The road

At the start

The white roads, and it is raining

Nibali still leads Basso by 13 seconds and Vinokourov by 33, and Liquigas hold three of the top five. Yesterday cost the race two more men, Tiralongo with a broken wrist and Bonnafond with a cut beside his eye, and Capecchi and Bruseghin did not start. Today crosses Tuscany to Montalcino over several sections of strade bianche, and it has rained on this Giro nearly every day.

How it was won

1. 160 km to go

   The field breaks apart on the white roads

   The flat first half is over and the strade bianche have turned brown under all-day rain. Sixty kilometres out the peloton splits, and it will never come back together.

2. 232 km to go

   Nibali goes down in the mud

   A Liquigas front wheel slides on a sweeping right-hander on the descent off the Passo del Rospatoio and four of them go down, the maglia rosa among them. By the time Nibali has a working bike, a group with Vinokourov in it is 1:30 up the road and gone.

3. 316 km to go

   Second sterrato, Vino at the front

   Sixteen kilometres out the race hits dirt again. The riders are unidentifiable under the mud, all but one: Vinokourov's shape is unmistakable on the front, and he is not there to survive.

4. 49 km to go

   Vino attacks at the nine-kilometre board

   On the last white section, into a sixteen per cent wall, Vinokourov goes. Only Evans follows, the world champion calling on a decade of mountain biking to hold a wheel in a brown river.

5. 54 km to go

   And again, at three and a half

   Back on tarmac Vinokourov attacks a third time. Cunego, Pinotti and Evans jump across, Gadret cannot, and four men are left for a stage and a maglia rosa.

6. 6At the line

   Evans, magnificent in the mud

   Cunego takes the better line through the last hairpin and slips past. Then the narrow cobbled ramp into Montalcino tilts up and the rainbow jersey, filthy and unrecognisable except for the shape of him, comes over the top and holds it to the line by two seconds. Vinokourov takes third and the race lead; Nibali arrives two minutes down and fifth overall.

The result