Yesterday Diego Ulissi crashed hard on a descent, lost more than four minutes and dropped out of contention for the top positions in the Giro d'Italia. Today he bounced back by doing the time trial of his life on a day when he actually only wanted to test his condition.

After winning two stages, Diego Ulissi faced his first adversity in yesterday's stage of the Giro d'Italia when he crashed on a descent. Being unable to breathe properly, he lost more than four minutes in the finale and dropped out of the top 10 of the overall standings.

Ulissi never had intentions of contesting the GC in the Italian race and so he could be expected to take it easy in today's time trial to save energy for the upcoming mountain stages. However, he wanted to see how he had recovered from his crash and so decided to ride hard on the first climb.

Apparently, he is no longer bothered by his injuries as he crested the summit in what was clearly the fastest time at that point of the race. Having realized that he could do a good ride, he decided to keep going all the way to the finish.

The end result was a surprising 2nd place behind the superior Rigoberto Uran and like most others, Ulissi certainly hadn't expected to come away with that kind of result.

"I started with the idea of assessing my condition after yesterday's crash," he said. "I would check it on the first climb and felt fine in the first 12km. Then I was told that I had a very good split time so I continued with conviction.

"Unfortunately, the descent was very wet, and despite the bike being perfect, I could not take any risks. In fact I had to go slowly and certainly lost a few seconds to the riders that started later.

"I was fine, the legs were better and I made a performance that was much better than I had expected. Obviously I am very pleased. I want to congratulate Uran because he was very strong."