The individual time trial came to the 98-th Giro d’Italia on Saturday for stage 14. At 59,4 km, the course was Treviso to Valdobbiadene was challenging and difficult, made all the more so with rain coming down for many of the riders. As the best-placed rider for Team Katusha, Iurii Trofimov was one of the last group of riders to start and put up a decent ride against the clock. His position on the general classification is 13th.

"I think we can be satisfied with Trofimov’s result today. He did a good race, since he is not a TT specialist. He showed almost the same time with many GC contenders and his direct rivals, so that's good. Now TT is behind us and we look forward to the real mountain stages which start beginning tomorrow," said team director Dmitry Konyshev.

The time to beat was set by Vasil Kiryienka (Sky) with a top time of 1:17.52. His time was challenged by Alberto Contador, but the Belarusian held fast and earned his first time trial win. Luis León Sanchez (Astana) was second at 12-seconds behind and Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) was third another 2-seconds back. Aleksandr Porsev became the best Katusha’s performer with 24th position (+2.47).

The huge effort on the bike paid off for Contador. After lending the maglia rosa for only one day to race leader Fabio Aru, the pink leader’s jersey came back to Alberto Contador in a big way as the Spaniard now leads by 2.28 to Aru and 3.36 to Andrey Amador (Movistar) in third place for the classification.

The climbing stage tomorrow promises to be a difficult one on the day before the second rest day as the Giro enters the third and final week of racing. At 165 km, stage 15 begins in Marostica, crosses a category 2 climb in the early part of the course, followed later by the cat 1 Passo Daone before the uphill finish on the category 1 Madonna di Campiglio.