"I'm happy with my condition, less with the result."

Those were the words of Astana's Tanel Kangert after stage twelve Giro d'Italia. Kangert attacked under a heavy rain with 8 kilometres to go and was caught by the main group only 400 meters from the finish line place on a steep climb.

Paolo Tiralongo finished in sixth place 3 seconds behind stage winner Philippe Gilbert of Belgium.

"We let Kangert go because we knew that Gilbert was still in the group," Tiralongo told Rai. "I in the end I took Gilbert's wheel because I wanted take the bonus seconds away from Contador but when I jumped, I had a chain problem and my knee hit the handlebar. In the end, Contador took second."

Those were the good news for Astana. It was more of a concern that team leader Fabio Aru lost ground in the uphill sprint where key rival Alberto Contador finished second. He is still second in General Classification but the gap has gone out from 3 to 17 seconds.

Mikel Landa and Dario Cataldo are still third and fourth in the overall, 55s and 1m 30s behind the leader, respectively.

“I cracked in the finale after not eating enough,” Aru said. “There wasn’t much time to eat and bring things around, so I was empty on the final climb to the finish. It was inevitable to lose something. But the Giro is still long and we’re focused for the stages ahead. You never stop learning in cycling. A bad day due to not eating enough can happen. However there still all the decisive stages to go in this Giro.

“Everybody knows Contador. He’s got experience and it works in his favour. I developed as a cyclo-cross rider and so I’m used to racing in cold and wet conditions like this. But if you make a mistake with your feeding strategy, you pay for it. That’s what happened to me today. But a bad day can happen, the important thing is to fight back.”