With a team mostly made up of sprinters, Team Giant-Shimano had no big plans for today's mountain stage of the Giro d'Italia and they were mostly intent on seeing how well youngsters Georg Preidler and Tobias Ludvigsson would fare against the best. In the end, the climb proved to be a bit too hard for their young riders.

Today’s eighth stage saw the first real mountain finish atop Montecopiolo of the Giro and it proved a step too far for the young Team Giant-Shimano opportunists as Tobias Ludvigsson and Georg Preidler both dropped back to finish over seven minutes down with the others sitting back in other groups further behind.

The stage was won by Italian Diego Ulissi (Lampre) taking his second stage of the race after a hard fight up the finishing climb.

The day started with a large 10-man move that survived long into the day with one rider making it to the final five kilometres before being swallowed up by the charging front group. Team Giant-Shimano set out to protect Ludvigsson and Preidler and to drop them off in position at the base of the final climb before seeing how long they could stick with the top climbers in the race.

The action kicked off right from the lower slopes of the climb and both the riders were soon in difficulty, struggling to hold onto the group which soon slimmed down to 2-30 riders.

They both gradually lost time and finished over seven minutes down with the rest of their teammates all finishing safely within the time limit either in the grupetto on in small groups in between.

Team Giant-Shimano coach, Addy Engels commented on the team’s performance after the stage: “The guys did what they could today but with the GC battle kicking off right from the start of the climb it was always going to be a tough fight.

“The team supported Goerg and Tobias well, putting them in a good position at the base of the climb and from there it was up to them to see how they could stick with the pace. There would always come a time when the climbing would become too hard for these guys as they are both still young and learning, and a stage like today will be a good experience on pacing and also seeing how stages like this are raced.

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Tomorrow is another tough mountain finish and we will see how the guys are feeling this evening before making a plan for this but they can look forward to a rest day following that for some well earned recovery on Monday.”