Stage 20

The road

At the start

The Stelvio day is gone

Snow cancelled yesterday's Gavia and Stelvio stage outright and handed the race an enforced rest day. Nibali won the mountain time trial before it and now leads Evans by 4:02 and Urán by 4:12. Today's route has been cut back too — the Passo Giau is gone — but the Tre Cime di Lavaredo still waits at the end of it, in one to five degrees, with more snow forecast.

How it was won

1. 113 km to go

   Thirty riders over the Tre Croci

   The weather that has run this whole Giro saves its worst for the last mountain day. Over the Passo Tre Croci the front group is down to around thirty, and of the day's escape only Eros Capecchi is still out there.

2. 27 km to go

   Into the blizzard

   Seven kilometres of climbing left, twelve per cent through its upper half with ramps at eighteen, and it is snowing hard enough that the road ahead simply disappears. The group turns onto it and begins to come apart at once.

3. 33 km to go

   Nibali goes with 2.5km left

   He takes a few metres of shelter off Tanel Kangert's wheel and then leaves it. Within seconds he has caught and passed Capecchi, the last man standing from the morning's break, and the group behind him is reeling.

4. 42 km to go

   The second acceleration

   Urán, Betancur and Duarte hold his wheel for a few hundred metres, which is all anybody gets. On the steepest ramp of the whole climb Nibali kicks again and they are gone — helmet and gloves caked with snow, idiots sprinting alongside him for their few seconds of television, and nothing left to beat but the mountain and the storm.

5. 5At the line

   Tre Cime di Lavaredo

   He fades a little in the last hundred metres, and it does not matter: seventeen seconds over Duarte, a second stage win, and the Giro d'Italia. He raises one arm, then the other, and kisses his wedding ring.

The result