Stage 6

The road

At the start

Weening in pink by two seconds

Pieter Weening survived the strade bianche by the width of the road and leads Pinotti and Siutsou by two seconds, with Nibali at 24 and Scarponi at 26. Today is another 219 kilometres, Classics length on ordinary roads, with one categorised climb early and a sting nobody has bothered to rank: the last eleven kilometres to Fiuggi drag steadily up to 616 metres.

How it was won

1. 1210 km to go

   Five for a long day

   After yesterday's gravel nobody wants risks, so Veikkanen, Vandewalle, Popovych, Modolo and Veuchelen are allowed six minutes and two hundred kilometres of road to think about it.

2. 250 km to go

   Cavendish is gone

   The sting of this stage is not a categorised climb, it is the last eleven kilometres dragging up to 616 metres. Fifty kilometres out the pace already sheds Mark Cavendish, and the sprinters' day quietly stops being one.

3. 310 km to go

   Forty-eight seconds on the last climb

   The break reaches the final ascent with forty-eight seconds and five hundred metres of road between them and a hard-charging chase. Millar kicks, Kiserlovski counters, Rabon follows, and Vandewalle refuses to be caught until 1,500 metres remain.

4. 4At the line

   Fiuggi

   Out of what is left of the bunch after 216 kilometres, Francisco Ventoso beats Alessandro Petacchi and then folds onto the tarmac. The biggest win of his career, taken off the fastest man in the race, on a finish no sprinter was supposed to survive.

The result