A little more than a month ago Michael Rogers didn't know if he would ever ride a professional bike race again after he had been provisionally suspended for a positive clembuterol test taken at the Japan Cup. A little more than a week ago, he marked his comeback in the grandest fashion when he won the Giro d'Italia stage to Savona.

 

Today, however, he topped that performance when he won the most prestigious stage of the Italian grand tour, conquering the feared an excessively steep Monte Zoncolan. The big Australian overcame the gravity and the tinier climbers in the 18-rider breakaway that decided the stage, to take an impressive solo victory.

 

However, the win came after an unfortunate incident had taken out Francesco Bongiorno. After a gradual elimination, the pair had emerged as the strongest and seemed to be very equally matched as they struggled their way up the steep climb.

 

A spectator had a very bad influence on the race when he decided to give Bongiorno a push, causing the Italian to hit Rogers' rear wheel. As a consequence, he had to unclip and he found it hard to get back up to speed on the gradients that were in excess of 15% at the point.

 

As a consequence, Rogers soloed clear and from there he constantly increased his advantage over his Italian chaser. He had plenty of time to celebrate what is undoubtedly the biggest road race win of his career and just the second grand tour stage win. Bongiorno was even passed by Franco Pellizotti (Androni) in the finale and so had to settle for third while the remnants of the early break rolled across one by one a little later.

 

Further back, the battle between the GC contenders was on and it was the Omega Pharma-Quick Step team that took on the challenge of applying the pressure. And impressive Wout Poels set such a brutal pace that only his team leader Rigoberto Uran and race leader Nairo Quintana could follow him while behind a chase group with Domenico Pozzovivo (Ag2r), Pierre Rolland (Europcar), Fabio Aru (Astana) and Rafal Majka (Tinkoff-Saxo) gathered.

 

The Quintana trio managed to build up a gap of 20 seconds but hard work by Pozzovivo briefly allowed the chasers to rejoin the race leader. Moments later, however, Uran made his first acceleration, leaving just the two Colombians in the group.

 

Poels briefly rejoined them before Uran made his final attack but Quintana appeared to be at ease. Finally, the race leader hit the front himself to lead his compatriot across the line and seal the overall victory.

 

Behind, the chase group had splintered, with Majka and Aru crossing the line a few seconds ahead of Rolland and Pozzovivo. However, the top 10 remained mostly unchanged as only Wilco Kelderman (Belkin) managed to leapfrog Cadel Evans (BMC) and move into seventh.

 

Quintana now heads into the mainly ceremonial final stage to Trieste with a 3.07 advantage over Uran and as the GC battle has now ended, only disaster can prevent him from winning his first grand tour. The final stage is almost completely flat and ends with 8 laps of a 7.2km finsihing circuit that has a small climb. As is often the case at the end of grand tours, however, the sprinters are expected to rule in Trieste.

 

After yesterday's brutal mountain time trial, there was no time to rest for the Giro d'Italia peloton as the race continued with the decisive stage in the mountains. It brought them over 167km from the start in Maniago to the top of the hardest climb in Italy, Monte Zoncolan. After a flat first half, the riders went up the Passo del Pura and the Sella Razo climbs as a kind of arm-up before they took on the brutal 10km ascent to the finish whose extreme gradients made it the perfect battleground for the true climbers.

 

The riders left Maniago in sunny conditions but unfortunately one rider who finished yesterday's time trial, wasn't at the start. Kenny Dehaes (Lotto Belisol) broke his chain twice on the Monte Grappa and as he had no neutral support, he missed the time cut. Despite several protests from his colleagues, there was no mercy for the Belgian who was not allowed to complete the Italian grand tour.

 

There was a small crash in the neutral zone when Manuele Mori (Lampre-Merida) and a Bardiani rider hit the deck but they suffered no major injuries. The stage was off to the expected fast start as a lot of riders planned to ride aggressively in a quest to deny the race favourites another stage win.

 

The break got clear surprisingly early though as 19 riders took off after just 6km of racing. While the peloton slowed down, Axel Domont (AG2R-La Mondiale), Franco Pellizotti & Jackson Rodriguez (both Androni Giocattoli),  Francesco Bongiorno (Bardiani), Maarten Tjallingii (Belkin), Mattia Cattaneo (Lampre-Merida), Maxime Monfort (Lotto-Belisol), Yonathan Monsalve & Mattio Rabottini (bothNeri Sottoli), Yukiya Arashiro (Europcar), Simon Geschke & Georg Preidler (noth Giant-Shimano), Pieter Serry (Omega Pharma-QuickStep),  Maxime Belkov (Katusha), Dario Cataldo (Sky), Michael Rogers & Nicolas Roche (both Tinkoff-Saxo) Danilo Hondo & Riccardo Zoidl (both Trek Factory Racing) were allowed to build a gap that reached 4 minutes at the 10km mark.

 

Nairo Quintana looked very focused at the start of the stage and so it was no surprise to see the Movistar team take control of the situation. Daniele Ratto (Cannondale) and Brent Bookwalter (BMC) were both in pursuit of the leaders and while the latter made the junction, the former fell back to the peloton.

 

Movistar brought tha gap down to 3 minutes after 23km of racing and as Ratto had not made it across, Cannondale also lend them a hand. The two teams kept the gap stable between the 3- and 4-minute marks for a long time but with an average speed of more than 50kph in the first hour, they had to dig deep to do so.

 

Tjallingii beat Domont and Bookwalter in the intermediate sprint before the riders took on the day's first challenge, the Passo del Pura. Cannondale did a good job to keep the gap relatively stable at around 3 minutes until they hit the climb. On the lower slopes, the hard pace caused the main group to splinter and the gap went down to just 2.15.

 

Up ahead, Arashiro, Hondo, Tjallingii, Rabottini and Rodriguez all fell off the pace while Robinson (Chalapud) set off in pursuit. While Francisco Ventoso and Adriano Malori set a hard pace for Movistar, the Colombian dangled a few seconds ahead but suddenly it seemed that the team of the race leader called off the chase. Ventoso and Malori slowed down and the gap to Chalapud and the front group started to grow massively.

 

Tim Wellens (Lotto Belisol), Edoardo Zardini (Bardiani) and Perrig Quemeneur (Europcar) set off in pursuit of Chalapud and made the junction just after the top of the climb. A little earlier, Cataldo and Monsalve had made a small attack to make sure that they scored maximum points on the climb but things came back together on the descent.

 

Movistar took it very easy in the downhill section and so the gap went up to more than 5 minutes. Rogers had a mechanical on the descent while Bookwalter, Preidler, Domont and Belko briefly got a gap but on the lower slopes of the second climb, they found back together.

 

Quemeneur was dropped from the chase group while Zardini was constantly yoyoing off the back. After a long hard chase, Wellens was the first to make the junction while Chalapud and finally Zardini made it across a little later. Quemeneur never made it and was later swallowd up by the peloton.

 

When the gap was up to 6 minutes, Jarlinson Pantano (Colombia) attacked but he had already stopped his effort when Vladimir Gusev (Katusha) joined him. They both decided to wait for the peloton where Malori and Ventoso were still setting the pace.

 

Things got interesting when Europcar asked Davide Malacarne to contribute to the pace-setting and the gap finally started to come down after it had reached 6.20. Moments later Romain Sicard hit the front to set a brutal pace and when his team leader Rolland slowed down, the Frenchman got a gap.

 

Surprisingly, Pozzovivo and Majka attacked and joined Sicard while Movistar now had to ride hard in pursuit. Igor Anton bridged the gap to the Pozzovivo group but Movistar soon neutralized the move.

 

The peloton was whittled down to just Amador, Capecchi, Quintana, Castroviejo, Uran, Poels, Rolland, Henao, Poljanski, Kiserlovski, Aru, Dupont, Vuillermoz, Kelderman, BAsso, Duarte, Mourey, Anacona by the time they made the junction and so Hesjedal and Evans had both been dropped. However, the group again slowed down and by the time they reached the summit, a lot of riders had rejoined them.

 

Up ahead, Cataldo and Monsalve had again accelerated to take maximum points at the top while on the descent Bookwalter and Monsalve got clear. Roche, Rogers, Preidler and Belkov and later Pellizotti joined them but when they reached the bottom, the group was back together.

 

Amador had led the peloton on the upper slopes of the descent until Ventoso and Malori had rejoined the group. The pair again hit the front but they allowed the gap to grow to a massive 7.45 by the time, the escapees hit the lower slopes of the Zoncolan.

 

Geschke and Wellens did the early work while Cattaneo and Zardini were the first to drop off. As the Giant rider continued to ride hard, the group gradually got smaller and smaller until only Geschke, Preidler, Rogers, Roche, Bongiorno, Pellizotti and Chalapud remained.

 

In the peloton, the battle for position had ramped up the speed and Ag2r had briefly contributed to the pace-setting. In fact, Amador and Jonathan Castroviejo were riding so fast that they got a gap with Quintana but the race leader asked them to slow down to wait for the rest of the group.

 

As soon as they hit the climb, Amador set a hard pace that made the group splinter. When he swung off, Capecchi took over until Robert Kiserlovski (Trek) attacked. Again Anton tried to join him but when he failed, he started to pace his team leader Quintana instead.

 

The pace was so fast that only Quintana, Rolland, Pozzovivo, Poels, Uran, Majka, Kelderman and Aru could keep up with the Basque while Pantano and Sebastian Henao (Sky) followed a little further back. At this point, Evans and Hesjedal had again fallen off the pace.

 

Up ahead, Roche, Geschke and Preidler fell off the pace and when Bongiorno upped the pace, Chalapud also had to surrender. While Bongiorno and Rogers shared the workload evenly, Pellizotti was clearly struggling and lost contact when Rogers accelerated with a little more than 5km to go.

 

Behind, Kiserlovski had again been caught and moments later Kelderman fell off the pace. That was the signal for Uran to ask Poels to up the pace and the Dutchman was so fast that only Uran and Quintana could follow him.

 

Behind, Pozzovivo, Majka, Rolland and Aru chased for a long time, with Pozzovivo doing all the work. Up ahead, the Quintana group caught Serry who took a turn for his team captain Uran that caused Poels to drop off.

 

Rolland got dropped while Pozzovivo  finally got his reward for the hard work when he and Poels rejoined the Quintana group. Moments later, Uran made his first attack that only Quintana could match.

 

Poels rejoined the pair while further back Pozzovivo, Majka, Aru and Rolland again found together. Up ahead, disaster struck for Bongiorno when a spectator pushed him into Rogers' rear wheel, causing him to unclip.

 

Rogers rode away from his rival and increased his gap all the way to the line to take a big solo win. Pellizotti passed Bongiorno near the top to take second while the remnants of the break rolled across the line one by one.

 

Uran made one final surge to get clear with Quintana but inside the final kilometre, it was the race leader himself who accelerated to cross the line with Uran on his wheel. Poels followed a little later with Majka and Aru while Rolland and Pozzovivo lost a few seconds near the end.