Stage 4

The road

At the start

Into the Apennines, and the first test

Ganna is still in pink after three days, sixteen seconds up on Tobias Foss, with Evenepoel and Almeida four seconds further back and the climbers all bunched in behind them. Today comes in two halves: flat across the plain to Parma, then nothing but up. Castello di Carpineti, Montemolino, and finally the Colle Passerino — four kilometres at ten per cent, with barely two downhill kilometres to Sestola after it.

How it was won

1. 1101 km to go

   Twenty-five go clear in the rain

   After a furious opening forty kilometres under skies so black they disrupt the television coverage, a big and dangerous group of twenty-five is finally allowed to escape into the Apennines.

2. 276 km to go

   The break begins to crumble

   The first of three steep, sodden climbs starts casting riders out the back of the escape. In the bunch Ganna buries himself for Bernal before handing over to Puccio.

3. 344 km to go

   Taaramäe rides for pink

   The Estonian attacks two kilometres from the summit with the maglia rosa genuinely within reach. Behind him De Marchi punctures, gets a fast change, and claws back to a chase group in which Dombrowski is quietly the strongest.

4. 43 km to go

   Dombrowski dances up the Passerino

   Four kilometres at ten per cent, and on the steepest sixteen-per-cent pitch of all Joe Dombrowski rises out of the saddle and slowly, painfully prises himself away from De Marchi. He crests alone and dives down the last 2.5km into Sestola with a stage of the Giro d'Italia in his hands.

5. 52 km to go

   The general classification explodes

   On the same slopes Landa surges across to Ciccone and Bernal, Vlasov and Carthy pile in behind. Yates, Bardet and Evenepoel lose eleven seconds, Nibali and Hindley thirty-four, Almeida a catastrophic 4:21 — on stage four.

6. 6At the line

   Sestola

   Dombrowski takes the stage; De Marchi comes in thirteen seconds down and, after eleven years of attacking as a professional, pulls on the maglia rosa in tears.

The result