"It takes a lot of mental concentration on a flat day in the third week. These stages look easy on television, but in reality they aren't."

Those were the words of Astana's Davide Malacarne after stage 17 at the Giro d'Italia. Malacarne spent the short, mostly flat day from Tirano into the lakeside Swiss city of Lugano working in the peloton to protect Fabio Aru and Mikel Landa, and then dropped back before the expected mass sprint.

Landa and Aru finished in the main bunch with the leaders, along with teammates Dario Cataldo, Tanel Kangert, Luis Leon Sanchez and Paolo Tiralongo, behind stage winner Sacha Modolo of Italy.

Landa remains in second place, 4:02 behind raceleader Alberto Contador of Spain, with Aru :50 back in third overall. Aru leads the Best Young Rider competition by more than 43 minutes, and Astana leads the Team Classification by more than 23 minutes with four days of racing to go.

The Giro returns to the mountains for the next three stages.

“It was a huge effort yesterday, I did something like 40km on my own. To be honest I suffered like crazy but tried to focus on losing as little as possible,” Aru said. “Today was a lot easier than yesterday but it was not easy because of the wind in the valley. We still went quite hard because of the break and because lots of people wanted to have a go in the sprint.

"I’m still a little tired after going deep yesterday but I haven’t given up mentally. I think my mental ability is one of my strengths. When you have some physical problems, that’s when things get difficult but I fought all the way to the finish in Aprica and I’m determined to fight on in this Giro.

“I think we played the right tactic. Mikel was on a good day and showed it by winning the stage, I was the one who suffered and paid for it. There’s been a lot of talk about the attack when Alberto had punctured but we were in the middle of the descent at the time and so nobody really knew what was going on. We only really followed the Katusha team who went for it.

“It’s not about who is the team leader, it's about legs. Mikel is going really well, he’s second overall, so it's right he gets to play his cards and see what happens.” 

“For sure we’ll try to invent something and sees what happens. “We’ve raced hard for 17 stages and now there are three tough mountain stages to come. We’ve never really had time to catch our breaths and I’m sure we’ll go hard on the last three days as well, before the Giro finishes in Milan.

“I’m focused on the final mountain stags now but even the last climb before the finish in Verbania tomorrow is pretty tough too. If I‘ve got the legs, I’d like to give it a go in the mountains, especially on the Colle delle Finestre. I raced cyclo-cross when I was young and so I like dirt tracks. But it all depends on how my legs are feeling.”