Stage 15

The road

At the start

The queen stage: 6,900 metres up

Igor Anton won the Zoncolan and is third at 3:21, one second behind Nibali, with Scarponi fourth at 4:06 and Contador more than three minutes clear of all of them. Today is 230 kilometres and 6,876 metres of climbing: Piancavallo, the Forcella Cibiana, the Passo Giau as Cima Coppi, the eighteen-percent slopes of the Fedaia, and a finish up at Rifugio Gardeccia. There is no harder day in this race.

How it was won

1. 157 km to go

   Garzelli over the Cima Coppi

   The highest point of the 2011 Giro, and Stefano Garzelli crosses it alone with forty-five seconds on Mikel Nieve, 1:25 on Hoogerland and 1:44 on a chase of nine. He is thirty-seven and riding for the mountains jersey and the stage at the same time.

2. 252 km to go

   Nibali descends alone

   Rodriguez and Arroyo move at the top of the pass and Contador jumps onto them with Scarponi, Anton, Menchov, Nibali and Kreuziger. Then Nibali simply goes, down the Giau on his own, faster than any of them dare, sitting between Garzelli and his rivals the whole way.

3. 335 km to go

   Contador halfway up the Fedaia

   Fourteen kilometres averaging 7.9 percent and touching eighteen. Halfway up, Contador attacks the favourites again and takes Rujano and Kruijswijk with him, and Nibali, who spent everything on the descent, starts going backwards up the mountain that will cost him the podium.

4. 428 km to go

   Seven minutes at the Passo Fedaia

   Garzelli crests with seven minutes on the men in pink and a mountains classification effectively won. Behind him Nibali comes over the top alone and dropped, with twenty-seven kilometres of descent and one more climb still to ride.

5. 510 km to go

   Twenty seconds, ten kilometres

   Everything Garzelli built is draining away on the climb to Val di Fassa: 6:41 at twenty-five kilometres, twenty seconds at ten, with the anonymous Nieve sitting behind him and the favourites coming. Nibali, meanwhile, has thrown himself down the Fedaia and got back on.

6. 66 km to go

   Nieve goes past

   With 5.7 kilometres left Mikel Nieve rides past Garzelli and is never headed. Behind them Contador attacks once more, for no reason except that he can, and snaps whatever thread was still connecting him to the rest of this race.

7. 7At the line

   Rifugio Gardeccia

   Euskaltel win the queen stage a day after winning the Zoncolan. Garzelli, who led it for more than a hundred kilometres, comes in second with the mountains jersey, Scarponi third, and the only rider whose Giro improved on the hardest day of it is the one already wearing pink.

The result