264-kilometers, that’s the distance of the Tour of Flanders, but also of the 2015 Giro d’Italia’s longest stage from Grosseto to Fiuggi. After 7 hours and 22 minutes in the saddle it was a sprint of exhausted riders that decided on the stage win. Diego Ulissi (Lampre-Merida) won. Sergey Lagutin finished 10th.

"Before the stage I knew the race could finish with an uphill sprint and that could be a good opportunity for me to try something. I managed to position myself very well in the last kilometer and I tried to do my best, but in the end I have to admit that some guys were just a bit faster than me. In general it was a really long and uninteresting stage. It was a hard working day. Only in the last 40 km something interesting happened,"  said Sergey Lagutin.

Already after 22 km a group of four riders went clear for the break of the day and built a gap of more than ten minutes. They were finally reeled back at 20 km from the finish, setting up the group sprint for the finale, a group sprint without some pure sprinters as the finale was really challenging. Diego Ulissi emerged from the middle of the bunch to win ahead of Juan José Lobato (Movistar) and Simon Gerrans (Orica-GreenEdge).

Alberto Contador retained his pink leader’s jersey for the third day, maintaining an advantage of 2-seconds to Fabio Aru (Astana) and 20-seconds to Richie Porte of Sky. Iurii Trofimov remains the best team rider for the general classification in 13th.

Saturday’s stage 8 brings an interesting stage between Fiuggi and Campitello Matese. After 186 kilometer the stage finishes atop Campitello Matese, a 15 km climb averaging 6,9 percent, again a nice test for the GC riders.