"You can win or lose by a few seconds."

Those were the words of Astana's Luis Leon Sanchez after stage fourteen of the Giro d'Italia. Sanchez rode a great time trial along the difficult paths in the hills surrounding Treviso, in the Venice area. After nearly 60km under the rain he finished in second place, only 12s behind stage winner Vasil Kiryenka of Belarus.

Fabio Aru is still second in the overall classification, 2m 28s from the new leader Alberto Contador of Spain. Dario Cataldo is now in sixth place with a delay of 4m 50s and Mikel Landa is seventh in the General Classification with a 4m 55s gap from the ranking top.

Astana Pro Team, on the eve of the first stage in the Alps, is still leading the Teams Classification.

“It was a long time trial, a long, long effort. To be honest, I’m not happy with my result, but we go on and the Giro continues,” Aru said. “Alberto is a great champion and he put in a big performance today on such a long time trial. I still have a lot of work to do in this discipline.”

“Alberto’s a champion, it’s going to be very difficult. He’s won a lot of big tours in his career. It was nice to nice to wear [the maglia rosa] but Alberto certainly put in a beautiful performance today.

“Tomorrow, there’s Madonna di Campiglio. On Tuesday, there’s the Mortirolo. On Friday, there’s Cervinia. On Saturday, there’s Sestriere. There are still important mountain stages to come. A lot of hard stages. The last week is a hard final week.”

“Tomorrow is a summit finish at the end of a difficult stage. We’ll have to recover and have a go. The base is there for the rest of the Giro and I certainly haven’t lost any of the hunger I had before today.”