Race Report: For such a stage to come so early in a Grand Tour… we had just about everything. A breakaway gaining big time, a frenzy of contenders attacking, escapees desperate to hang on. A slow-burning stage which exploded in the last five kilometers.At the end in Abetone, another young talent had broken through with a huge win. However, the maglia rosa rests on the shoulders of a very familiar figure. Here’s how it went down…We’d had the usual firestorm of attacking and it took a while for the right set of chips to fall on the table; missing out was Nippo-Vini Fantini’s Alessandro Malaguti who ploughed away pointlessly before realising the folly of sitting in no man’s land. Enjoying a day out were Sylvain Chavanel (IAM Cycling), Swiss powerhouse Silvan Dillier (BMC Racing), Lampre-Merida’s Jan Polanc, Androni Giocatolli had Serghei Tvetcov and AG2R-La Mondiale who were represented by Axel Domont.Luke Durbridge was the Orica-GreenEDGE rider tasked with towing the peloton along towards the foot of the final haul to the summit finish at Abetone, and Durbo the Turbo just set to rolling along, keeping the break from gaining anything too catastrophically silly. But inside 70 kms to go the lead was just over 11 minutes. The maglia rosa Simon Clarke’s team may have decided that with no-one in the break even the remotest threat to his position, they’d let them get on with it. And if Clarke slipped up on the final climb, his young Colombian team-mate Chaves would...
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