Stage 6

The road

At the start

The longest day, to Montecassino

A landslide has added ten kilometres and made this the longest stage of the Giro: 248 flat kilometres north out of Sassano, then eight up to the hilltop abbey of Montecassino, seventy years after the battle that flattened it. Michael Matthews holds pink from his own team-mate Pieter Weening at fourteen seconds, with Cadel Evans a second further back and hunting every bonus second going.

How it was won

1. 1188 km to go

   Fourteen minutes in the sun

   Bandiera, Zardini, Fedi and Torres go clear almost from the gun out of Sassano and the peloton simply lets them ride, the gap ballooning to fourteen minutes on a warm, long road north.

2. 230 km to go

   The clouds gather over Montecassino

   Thirty kilometres from the abbey the sky breaks and the rain begins. Nobody eases: the peloton lifts the pace instead, hunting the four leaders down over wet, greasy roads.

3. 312 km to go

   The break is swallowed

   With 12km to go the last of the escapees is caught and the fight for position at the foot of the climb turns frantic.

4. 49 km to go

   The roundabout that broke the Giro

   Squeezed into a right-hand turn at a roundabout on soaking tarmac, at least a dozen riders go down and the road is blocked. Eight men are up the road and clear; behind them the general classification is torn to pieces. Joaquim Rodríguez, battered and bleeding, loses his Giro in the middle of the wreckage and will abandon the next morning.

5. 5At the line

   Matthews holds pink at the abbey

   BMC drag the survivors up the eight kilometres to Montecassino for Evans, who launches the sprint himself — and Michael Matthews comes past to win the stage and keep the maglia rosa, with Wellens second. The chasers concede 49 seconds, some of them far more.

The result