Stage 10

The road

At the start

The first summit finish

Nibali leads Evans by twenty-nine seconds, Gesink by 1:15 and Wiggins by 1:16. Maxim Belkov's fifty-kilometre solo took Florence yesterday, and Hesjedal lost his Giro on Fiesole. Today the race reaches its first mountain top: the Cason di Lanza and a narrow, steep descent off it, then the Altopiano del Montasio, which starts at nearly eight per cent and has a wall of twenty.

How it was won

1. 151 km to go

   The Cason di Lanza, and its descent

   A hard climb, and then something worse: a long, twisting, very narrow, very steep way down. Rodríguez and Pauwels take it at the front and open four and a half minutes; behind them Pellizotti misses one of the innumerable curves, and everybody else holds their line and their breath.

2. 226 km to go

   Rodríguez fights his gears

   He has been wrestling a gearbox that will not shift for a very long time, and with twenty-six kilometres left he gives in and changes bikes — then needs adjustment after adjustment to the new one. Pauwels waits for him. Their lead is still over two minutes at the foot of the mountain.

3. 39 km to go

   Caught, with nine to climb

   The Montasio starts at a steady 7.8 per cent and then rears to twelve, with one wall at twenty. Sky drive it, the two leaders are swallowed with a little over nine kilometres left, and the picture is suddenly clear: Nibali has lost Kangert, his only helper. Wiggins still has a team.

4. 48 km to go

   Urán rides away from everybody

   Eight kilometres out, Rigoberto Urán goes — not as a domestique setting a tempo but as a rider taking a stage and putting the maglia rosa under real pressure, only 2:49 down himself. Hair streaming, he rides smoothly clear, and nobody follows.

5. 53 km to go

   Wiggins goes backwards on the wall

   Where the Montasio is steepest, the man Sky built this Giro around loses the group. Evans and Nibali ride on together, Pozzovivo jumps across after Urán, and Sky's plan is upside down: their leader is being dropped while their third man wins the stage.

6. 6At the line

   Altopiano del Montasio

   Urán cruises in for the first summit finish of this Giro. Behind him the little group detonates over the bonus seconds — Betancur takes second at twenty seconds, Nibali sprints for third, and the pink jersey stays in Sicilian hands.

The result