Team Colombia has promised to be aggressive in their debut Giro d'Italia and true to their words they went on the attack in yesterday's rain-soaked 9th stage to Firenze. As the only team, the South Americans had two riders in the day's 12-man move and Jarlinson Pantano was one of only 3 riders to stay away all the way to the finish.

Colombia was a surprise invitation to this year's Giro d'Italia but the prospect of another South American team attacking to death in the mountains was too much for organizers RCS Sport to resist. The team gratefully accepted their opportunity and promised to enliven the mountain stages by putting in an aggressive performance.

After a rather low-key start highlighted by the attacks of Jarlinson Pantano and Robinson Chalapud in stage 3 and 4 respectively, the team finally showed its worth in yesterday's tough and 9th stage. The lumpy profile suggested that a long-distance breakaway had a good chance of going all the way to the finish and almost all teams had planned to join the day's early move.

When the successful 12-rider group finally slipped away, it was, however, not one of the big-money ProTeams who had managed to play no less than 2 riders in the break. Instead, the underdogs from Colombia was the only team to have more than one rider in the break as both Pantano and Chalapud had managed to slip into the move.

Keen to take the mountains jersey Chalapud rode aggressively on the day's first two climbs and battled hard with Stefan Pirazzi for the points at the top. He came up short against the Italian but still managed to move himself into 2nd just 15 points behind the Bardiani rider.

When Chalapud was caught it was time for Pantano to kick into action. At this point eventual winner Maxim Belkov (Katusha) had already gone up the road in a solo move but the Colombian set off in pursuit on the penultimate climb.

Despite assistance from Tobias Ludvigsson (Argos-Shimano) who joined him on the descent, the young rider was unable to bridge the gap and instead the duo had to contest the decide the final podium places. On the approach to the line they were, however, caught by another Colombian Carlos Betancur (Ag2r) who sprinted to second while Pantano had to settle for 3rd.

“Today we were hugely motivated to go on the attack and fight for a result  and we managed to get into the break with two men, Chala and myself," Pantano said." I was feeling very good, but in the first two KOM we chose to support Chala to help him take as many points as possible. After Belkov’s attack, I tried to bridge over by myself: I could not do it, but today’s third place is a result I am very glad with. And I think we provided a very good show for cycling fans, both in Colombia and all over the World.”

The team has not yet entered its favoured terrain in the mountains but nonetheless the team put in a great showing yesterday. Sports director Valerio Tebaldi is confident that we will see even more action from his young riders already on Tuesday when the race has its first summit finish.

“Nine days into the race, it’s no more about single exploits: real values are now coming up, and our guys are handling this challenge very well, even competing with such a strong field," he said. "The real mountains start on Tuesday, and I am confident we will be in the mix.”

Besides Chalapud's position in the mountains classification, the team also has GC ambitions and the team's two captains Fabio Duarte and Darwin Atapuma have both survived the long time trial to sit 34th and 36th with a time loss to race leader Vincenzo Nibali of 8.54 and 9.52 respectively.

Starting at 14.15 you can follow tomorrow's big battle in the mountains on CyclingQuotes.com/live.