After suffering on the Giro d’Italia queen stage, Alejandro Valverde now finds himself over three minutes down on GC and his Movistar boss Eusebio Unzue has admitted it will be a hard Giro for the veteran from here on in.

“It wasn’t the day we wanted,” Movistar manager Eusebio Unzue said afterwards, with considerable understatement. “Andrey has had a cold for the last two days. He was going well, but he felt a bit blocked all day. Alejandro was very good all day, but then on the last climb, the change of pace – unexpectedly and strangely – didn’t suit him. Nothing before that last climb indicated that was going to happen.”

With most of the stage taking place around 1800m above sea level, with some of the passes gong over 2000m, Valverde may have struggled with the altitude.

Unzue hopes that he can do a good mountain TT today on Alpe di Siusi to keep himself in contention for a podium overall.

“If Alejandro does a good time trial, we can go for the podium. The maglia rosa is very hard now. Alejandro is at three minutes now and I think it’s very difficult, very complicated,” Unzue said.

Unzue says his favourite for the GC is now Chaves, with Kruijswijk (who leads the race just now) a close second.