It was the sixth time this Giro d’Italia that an early escape made it to the finish, as Ilnur Zakarin took the stage victory with a late attack at the end of a wet day of racing. Simon Geschke sprinted to a 14th place.

The difficult stage 11 took the peloton through a hilly course of 153km. After 30km of racing ten riders got clear from the bunch to make the day’s break.

With 70km to go, the bunch split up in four groups as 60 riders formed the first large group.

At the second out of three local circuits of 15km around the racing track of Imola, Russian Ilnur Zakarin (Team Katusha) attacked from the leading group and soloed to the finish.

Geschke was the only rider of Team Giant-Alpecin who was part of the first large group and sprinted to 14th. Beñat Intxausti (Movistar Team) took over Geschke's lead in the mountain classification.

Coach Marc Reef reflected after the stage: “It was a hard day that went up and down constantly from the start. Our plan was to get in the break with Simon, Tobias [Ludvigsson], Chad [Haga], and Caleb [Fairly], but that didn’t worked out. 10 strong riders got away without us and three of them also were a threat for Simon’s jersey.

“After the bunch split we had no one in the first group, but fortunately Simon made the jump to join it. In the finale, 9 riders were in front of the reduced bunch as Simon became 5th of the group and 14th in the stage result. He lost the jersey and is now 2 points behind on leader Intxausti.”