Stage 13

The road

At the start

Austria, and the Grossglockner

The gaps are unchanged: Contador by 59 seconds over Siutsou and 1:21 over Nibali, with Scarponi at 1:28. Today is 167 kilometres and 4,200 metres of climbing across the border — the Monte Croce Carnico, the Gailberg Sattel, the Iselsbergpass, and then the long cold haul up the Grossglockner to finish. Today is where the race finds out whether anybody here is actually a rival.

How it was won

1. 1126 km to go

   Sixteen up the road, six sprinters gone home

   The stage starts without Cavendish, Petacchi, Ventoso, Renshaw, Hondo and Belletti, who have all left before the mountains. After forty-one kilometres a sixteen-man break goes, and Euskaltel put three and sometimes four riders on the front to clear the way for Igor Anton.

2. 239 km to go

   Kiserlovski goes alone

   On the Iselsbergpass, Robert Kiserlovski leaves the break on his own. He is not elegant about it, but it works, and he takes a good lead into the rain and the cold on the road to Austria's biggest mountain.

3. 313 km to go

   Caught on the Grossglockner

   Weening and Sarmiento overhaul Kiserlovski thirteen kilometres from the summit, and within seconds the following cars are being waved out of the way, because the maglia rosa group is already on top of them all.

4. 49 km to go

   The gradient ramps, Contador leaves

   Rujano attacks and Anton follows; Scarponi accelerates and is tracked down. Then, with 8.5 kilometres left, Contador goes, barely seeming to move, spinning that impossible cadence, and for a moment nobody comes at all. Rujano eventually claws across. Scarponi tries and yields.

5. 57 km to go

   Forty seconds at the Kasereck

   At the mountains banner with seven kilometres to go the pair are forty seconds clear of everything behind them. Over the last five kilometres of climbing they double it.

6. 6At the line

   Grossglockner

   Rujano slides past 150 metres from the line and Contador does not so much as change his rhythm to contest it. The Venezuelan wins a Giro stage six years after his last; the Spaniard has taken another minute and a half out of every rival he has, in the wet, without appearing to try.

The result