Cycling: It took nine days. For the first time in this Giro d'Italia a breakaway was allowed to celebrate. The Dutchman Pieter Weening (Orica-GreenEdge) prevailed in Sestola against his flight companion Davide Malacarne (Europcar). Third was Domenico Pozzovivo (Ag2R-La Mondiale).
Weening, who already won a stage at the Giro in 2011 and back then even that Pink sweater could take over, broke away from a leading group, which had dominated the race up to that point, sixteen kilometers before the finish. The field around the overall leader Cadel Evans (BMC) let the escapees do their thing. The front runners needed more than seven minutes for the last sixty kilometers. And these should be enough.
A few kilometers before the start of the climb up to the finish line to Sestola, Weening finally fled. He used a traffic island that bypassed all other breakaways on the other side. As a result, the group continued to disintegrate. But all successes to catch up with Weening were unsuccessful. Only Malacarne made the connection. Together they continuously increased their lead over their former escape companions. In the last kilometer they had enough time to do a tactical sprint.
But another rider also surprised at the climb to the finish line: Domenico Pozzovivo. The little Italian attacked four kilometers from the finish and moved up to 42 seconds behind the two leaders. He took half a minute off the other favorites. In the overall ranking, he was able to improve to fourth place. He is still ahead of Evans, Rigoberto Uran (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) and Rafal Majka (Tinkoff-Saxo).