Richie Porte rode hard to retain third place overall at the Giro d'Italia following the stage eight summit finish.

The Tasmanian was able to ride across the gap after an attack from Fabio Aru (Astana) on the ascent to Campitello Matese as an elite selection formed.

With superb pace-setting work from team-mates Leopold Konig and Mikel Nieve, Porte was able to sit in the group on the way to sixth place on the stage.

There was little to separate the favourites despite further late accelerations from Aru and Porte, with Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) retaining the maglia rosa, now with a 22-second gap back to the Team Sky leader.

Team Sky continued to ride their way into the race and hit the front on the approach to the first-category summit, with Elia Viviani doing the initial tempo work in the red jersey he retained on the stage.

Up ahead the stage win once again went to a member of the day's breakaway, with Benat Intxausti (Movistar) proving strongest of the 12-man group to win by 20 seconds over Mikel Landa (Astana), who jumped out of the group of favourites late on.

A relentless start to the day out of Fiuggi saw the peloton split on the approach to the opening climb. An opportunistic Contador added a further two seconds to his lead at the first intermediate sprint in Sora.

The break took a long time to form but when it did go it was a strong 12-man move which carved out a big advantage as the peloton briefly eased up.

Astana came forwards ahead of the 12.5km final climb, upping the pace late on. Despite Contador becoming isolated the Spaniard showed little evidence of the partially dislocated shoulder he suffered on Thursday.

Aru was the first of the GC men to make their move with 5km to go, but in the end there was little to separate the contenders, who face another day in the medium mountains on Sunday.

“People have been asking questions about the team but we haven’t had to ride, it wouldn’t have made sense. They’ve been taking care of themselves until now,” Porte said. "We saw Alberto was isolated there. Astana had the numbers but Landa was up the road, I’m not sure what that was all about.

“But I’m so happy with how today went. From the start, Sebastien Henao was great and to have König and Nieve put in that effort for me was great to see. I’m feeling good too, and it was good to put in a bit of a dig.”

“He’s in the jersey, isn’t he, so all he has to do is cover the moves," he added about Contador. "I think he would have liked to have had a few more guys up there but they’ve taken the race on in the first week and that obviously takes a fair bit out of you doing that.

“We have to see: I don’t think you can be in too much difficulty if you’re still riding up that climb that fast. But we’ll see day by day, and see how it goes. I’ve got big respect for Alberto, he’s a big fighter and I don’t think he’s going to show how much pain he’s in anyway.

“Obviously there’s Rigoberto as well, who’s back from whatever was wrong the other day and he can time trial as well, so if they [Contador and Aru] are just looking at me, they’ve got a bit of a shock coming. There are more guys to worry about than just the ‘Three Tenors’ or whatever they’re calling it.”

"It was a pretty good stage for us," said Sports Director Dario Cioni. "We were there with numbers on the climb but also at the finish. We were happy to get the others to make the moves and cover attacks rather than being aggressive ourselves. As we expected the climb wasn't quite hard enough to force a real selection. We preferred to be a bit more calm out there.

"When Aru went there was initially a gap but that was more because everyone was sitting behind their team-mates. So he had 10 metres advantage at the start but Richie came across quite easily. After that it was more of a tactical game.

"It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow and how hard the peloton go. We saw today that at one point it was down to 60 riders at the front. It's a hard stage and even the finish is not easy at all. Sometimes you get bigger time gaps on those less obvious finishes than the big mountain-top ones."