Stage 15

The road

At the start

Kruijswijk in pink, straight up the Siusi

The Dolomites left Steven Kruijswijk in the maglia rosa with Vincenzo Nibali at forty-one seconds and Esteban Chaves at 1:32, while Valverde and Amador are already more than three minutes adrift. Today is a mountain time trial of barely ten kilometres to the Alpe di Siusi, uphill from the first metre, ridden on legs two days out of the queen stage. Démare and Hesjedal are among seven who did not finish yesterday.

How it was won

1. 16 km to go

   Zakarin fastest at 4.4km

   The gentle opening kilometres of the climb to the Alpe di Siusi flatter nobody: Zakarin sets the mark, Valverde is three seconds down, Nibali twenty-one and Chaves thirty-four.

2. 24 km to go

   Nibali throws his bike away

   The chain jams on the steepening slope. He wrestles with it himself, a mechanic fails to fix it, and the Sicilian hurls his Specialized toward a spectator. The replacement arrives in under a minute but he is 90 seconds down by the next check and still shipping time.

3. 3At the line

   Foliforov by less than a second

   Alexander Foliforov of Gazprom-Rusvelo takes an astonishing win, edging Kruijswijk by under a second. The maglia rosa looks unbreakable and now leads Chaves by 2:21, Nibali by 2:51.

The result