Stage 7

The road

At the start

A profile like a saw blade

Paolini leads by seventeen seconds from Urán, with Intxausti, Nibali, Hesjedal and Wiggins all inside thirty-five. Today the Giro finally shows its teeth: a hundred and seventy-seven kilometres across Abruzzo with three thousand metres of climbing and almost no flat road in it, a profile like a saw blade, and a technical run down into Pescara.

How it was won

1. 170 km to go

   Seventy kilometres of saw teeth

   The profile of the day looks like a blade, and with seventy kilometres left the real climbing starts. Vini Fantini have led the chase all afternoon and keep leading it; the gap to the six in front finally begins to fall, and the favourites move up.

2. 220 km to go

   Hansen alone

   Emanuele Sella has already crashed once and clawed his way back up to Hansen, and the pair have three minutes. On the Santa Maria de Criptis, Sella cracks — and Adam Hansen, the ultimate helper, the man who rode all three Grand Tours last year, is on his own with twenty kilometres left.

3. 39 km to go

   Nibali attacks, and hits the deck

   Kangert has gone, Di Luca has chased, neither has stuck. Then Nibali attacks on the last descent, in the rain, on roads that have been throwing riders down all day — and puts himself on the ground. He is up and back in the group within moments, which is more than others manage.

4. 45 km to go

   Wiggins slides out with five to go

   The same wet corners, a different rider. Bradley Wiggins goes down five kilometres from Pescara, and what costs him is not the fall but everything after it: he takes the rest of the descent at a crawl, and the Giro rides away from him in the wet.

5. 5At the line

   Hansen wins, Intxausti takes pink

   Hansen crosses Pescara more than a minute clear of Battaglin and Di Luca, the biggest win of a career built on giving them away. Behind him the day rearranges everything: Beñat Intxausti into the maglia rosa by five seconds from Nibali, Paolini down to fifteenth, Wiggins out of the top twenty altogether.

The result