Former pink jersey wearers Simon Gerrans and Michael Matthews rolled in with a largely diminished peloton for 15th and 16th positions on stage 11 of the Giro d’Italia today.

Despite the best efforts from their teammates, including Luke Durbridge, Simon Clarke and Esteban Chaves, ORICA-GreenEDGE were unable to shut done an early breakaway to contest the final.

Meanwhile up ahead, Ilnur Zakarin (Team Katusha) attacked the escapees for a solo victory in Imola.

Much like the surprise finish of yesterday’s stage, a lack of interest from teams to bring it back together that saw another successful day for those up the road.

“Today was an incredibly hard stage and it was always going to be,” sport director Matt White said.

“Quite a selective group formed early in the stage and we decided we were going to try to bring it back together on the circuits but we weren’t able to catch Zakarin.

“The first person to work was Luke Durbridge who did a big pull for three-quarters of a lap, then Clarke and Chaves did what they could until they had nothing left but we fell a bit short.”