With his classics campaign over, Bradley Wiggins is moving into stage racing mode as he prepares for his big goals at the Tour of California and the Tour de France. Today he showed flashes of his former climbing legs when he single-handedly led the peloton for 6km in the first mountain stage of the Giro del Trentino, setting his captains Kanstantsin Siutsou and Dario Cataldo up for the finale.

Kanstantsin Siutsou led the Team Sky charge on stage two of Giro del Trentino and a difficult summit finish.
 

A stage winner in the race last season, the Belarusian crossed the line in 14th to remain on the fringes of the general classification fight. The result places Siutsou 11th overall, 40 seconds back on the new race leader.

Team Sky and Sir Bradley Wiggins had arrived on the front to drive the pace with seven kilometres to go as overnight leader Daniel Oss (BMC Racing) began to fall into difficulties.

In the end it was Oss's team-mate Cadel Evans who captured the race lead following the first of three summit finishes.

The Australian was able to kick onwards on the San Giacomo di Brentonico climb to put time into a number of rivals, finishing in an elite group, 19 seconds behind a surprise breakaway winner.

Edoardo Zardini (Bardiani-CSF) had jumped clear further down the 15-kilometre final climb and the young Italian quickly left behind his rivals and made his way to the summit, coming close to taking the race lead in the process.

Przemyslaw Niemiec (Lampre-Merida) dragged his way across to Evan's attack to claim second place on the day, with Fabio Duarte (Colombia) rounding out the podium on the 164.5km stage.

The end result saw Evans assume a nine-second lead, benefiting from his team's victory in Tuesday's team time trial which enabled him to hold off the charge of Zardini.

After the stage Sports Director Dario Cioni described the gameplan and the tough final climb.

"Today the plan was to have Kosta and Dario Cataldo have a go at GC," he explained. "Brad hasn't done much climbing recently but we knew how well he was going on the flat after Roubaix and the TTT yesterday. He wanted to help Dario and Kosta and he did a really impressive job setting tempo. He pulled for just over six kilometres. Dario didn't quite have the legs but Kosta had a good ride.

"He was maybe missing a bit of racing sharpness but he kept close to the leaders and he's there in 11th on the GC. He's 30 seconds off a podium so he's in the game - especially considering tomorrow's stage and then the day after."