Like so many others, Tinkoff-Saxo had a very unfortunate day in the Giro d'Italia as both GC riders Rafal Majka and Nicolas Roche were among the many riders involved in the crashes. While the latter managed to rejoin the peloton, the latter fell completely out of GC contention and will now reevaluate his goals.

It was no less than a hilly cycling marathon in the Giro d’Italia today where the riders were challenged with 257 undulating kilometers from Sassano to the uphill finish on Montecassino where the landscape offered another thrilling and punchy finale with an unfortunate outcome for the Tinkoff-Saxo GC rider, Nicolas Roche, while Rafal Majka moved up to 4th place overall.

Towards the finale in a slippery wet roundabout, most of the peloton went to the ground and only a very small group with Michael Matthews and Cadel Evans (BMC) avoided the pile-up and kept on pushing forwards while the GC riders were chasing with Movistar in the front. On the final kilometer, Evans picked up the pace himself but on the finish line line, the leader of the race, Matthews took the stage win while the chase group including Tinkoff-Saxo’s Michael Rogers and Rafal Majka crossed the finish line 49 seconds behind the front quartet.

"Rafal did a excellent job in fighting is way back to the chasing group after the crash and he managed not to lose time to the other GC riders except Cadel Evens. Today we saw the unfortunate side of cycling and Majka, Roche, Rovny and Poljanski all went down in the crash," says Lars Michaelsen after the stage

Unfortunately, Nicolas Roche was held back by the crash and never made it up to the chase group.

"It’s a shame because Nicolas is in really good shape. He was held back and when he was able to move forward again it was way too late and he had lost a lot of time already. So we’ll sit down and find other goals for Nicolas during the Giro so he can focus on using his great race form," concludes Lars Michaelsen.