On what should have been a rather calm and eventless stage for the sprinters ended up spelling the end of Bradley Wiggins' podium ambitions in the Giro. Suffering from a chest infection, the Sky leader was unable to follow the peloton on the descent from the day's final climb and he ended up losing 3.17 to his rivals and is now only 13th overall. However, team principal David Brailsford vows to fight on and is keen to stress that the team still has lots of cards to play.

Bradley Wiggins was the big loser in today's dramatic 12th stage of the Giro d'Italia. Yesterday, the team had stressed its wish to get safely through a rather easy day to save energy for later battles but instead the stage ended up as the single most crucial one for the British team until now.

Already on the first descent of the day team captain Bradley Wiggins was seen completely on his own at the back of the peloton but was able to rejoin on the flat stretch moments later. That was, however, just a sign of things to come and when he once again fell off on the final descent, he never saw the front again.

Assisted by his entire team - with the exception of Rigoberto Uran and Sergio Henao - he crossed the finish line with a time loss of 3.17 to drop down from 4th to 13th in GC. Being more than 5 minutes behind Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), Wiggins seems to be out of the battle for the top position in the race.

Prior to the stage the Brit had claimed to suffer from a chest infection and when he at some point was dropped by his own team on a flat piece of road, it was evident that something was completely wrong. It marks a dramatic change of fortunes for the Sky leader who has not seen any bad luck since his dramatic crash in the 2011 Tour de France which left him with a broken collarbone.

“Since he broke his collarbone, I can’t remember a period where he was particularly ill," team principal David Brailsford told Sky Sports after the stage. “We had a lot of things that went our way and we didn’t have any setbacks, but in the fullness of time, that is going to come along and you have to take it in your stride."

With Wiggins now out of the battle - and possible even the race - the team is, however, not left with no options. Rigoberto Uran won the first big stage in the mountains and finds himself in 3rd place overall. Furthermore, Sergio Henao is still 11th overall and Brailsford was keen to stress that the team still has all to play for.

“We are in a great position in the race," he said. "We are still in a very good position on GC and I think we have got a very strong team and they are all very motivated and they will continue to ride for Rigoberto, so the team doesn’t lose its purpose."

That makes the situation completely different from that 2011 edition of the Tour de France. At that time the team had put all its eggs in the Wiggins basket and when he crashed out of the race, the team had to completely change its focus from a GC to a stage win perspective.

“When Bradley broke his collarbone in the Tour, that was quite a difficult thing to take on because the team lost its purpose because the team swapped from trying to get a result in the race to getting stage results, whereas here we still feel that we are competitive in the race," Brailsford says.

The team will get its first opportunity to show that they are still very much part of the race in tomorrow's 13th stage. Being mostly flat, it is, however, not one for the British team to target and they will probably be content to get safely through another day before the race hits the mountains in the weekend.

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