Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo) almost won the mountain time trial to Alpe di Siusi and extended his overall lead on Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) and Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) - but he is still keeping his feet on the ground, insisting the Giro d'Italia was far from decided.
The Dutchman was again impressive and arguably the strongest rider of the race for a second consecutive stage as he tackled the 10.8km time trial, spinning his legs at a metronomic pace.
He stopped the clock just a few hundreds of a second slower than Alexander Foliforov (Gazprom-Rusvelo) in 28:39. He gained time on all his overall rivals, but Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) bounced back from his bad day in the Dolomites to lose only 23 seconds to Kruijswijk. Chaves lost 40 seconds and Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha) lost 47 seconds, while Nibali was the big loser today, dropping 2:10 due to a mechanical problem that required a bike change in addition to his struggles on the constant gradient of the climb.
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Kruijswijk now leads Chaves by 2:12, with Nibali slipping to third overall at 2:51. Valverde is fourth at 3:29 and Rafal Majka (Tinkoff) is fifth at 4:38. The three-day block of mountainous racing had, as expected, shown who is a real contender in this year's Giro d'Italia and divide the best by minutes rather than just seconds.
"I missed out on the win but I took time out of my rivals and that's the main thing," he said, explaining his performance.
"I knew it was a 30 minute time trial and that I had to start fast to not lose too much time. I was lucky to keep a high pace. I went full gas and focused on keeping a good rhythm. The last two kilometres were the hardest of all."
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