Bob Jungels rides into pink as Giulio Ciccone wins Giro d'Italia stage 10
The 21-year-old Italian took the win on the summit finish to Sestola in his first career Giro d'Italia as Jungels claimed pink from his teammate Gianluca Brambilla
Neo-pro Giulio Ciccone (Bardiani-CSF) took the stage victory on the summit finish of stage 10 of the 2016 Giro d'Italia after riding in the day's main breakaway, with leader of the youth classification Bob Jungels (Etixx-Quick Step) claiming pink from his teammate Gianluca Brambilla.
Italia Ciccone got into the day's large breakaway with his teammate Stefano Pirazzi which gained a maximum gap of more than five minutes on the peloton.
But things began to break up for the group after Georg Preidler (Giant-Alpecin) attacked with 40km to go, splitting the group to pieces.
The Austrian stayed out on his own for some time with no-one able to make significant in-roads in pursuit until he hit the slopes of the Plan del Falco climb.
Priedler was then caught by some of his previous breakaway companions with around 18km remaining, including the two Bardiani riders along with the likes of Darwin Atapuma (BMC), Guillaume Bonnafond (Ag2r La Mondiale) and 2004 Giro winner Damiano Cunego (Nippo-Vini Fantini).
Giulio Ciccone wins stage ten of the 2016 Giro d'Italia
(Image credit: Watson)
Cunego attacked to take the King of the Mountains points at the top of the categorised climb at 16km remaining, with the Bardiani pair the only ones to follow. The trio then began the descent towards the final 7km climb to Sestola, but 21-year-old Ciccone's decisive moment came on the descent.
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His team leader Pirazzi appeared to collide with compatriot Cunego, and while both managed to stay upright, they were forced to slow so much that they rapidly lost significant time as Ciccone hurtled down the climb.
Ivan Rovny (Tinkoff) was the only rider who had been in the day's main break that was able to muster some strength to pursue from further back, but he was only able to finish 42 seconds behind Ciccone as held a strong pace on the climb and crossed the line to take a huge victory.
Giro d'Italia 2016 stage 10 profile
Behind, the GC riders began to take aim at race leader Gianluca Brambilla, who had suffered on the earlier climbs of the day. And despite some hard work from his Etixx teammates, it became clear the Brambilla was put to task in helping Jungels into pink on the stage, and worked on the front as third place Andrey Amador (Movistar) attacked on the Plan del Falco descent.
The Costa Rican, who was only 32 seconds down on GC, looked to be making some decent gains ahead of GC favourites as he rode up the final climb, linking up with teammate Giovanni Visconti up the rode, who had been in the break.
The two main casualties of the day in the GC were Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin), who had already admitted he was suffering over the weekend, losing 13 minutes, and Mikel Landa (Team Sky) who had surprisingly fallen six minutes behind the bunch early on in the day before abandoning.
His team later released a statement saying the Spaniard had been suffering from illness over night.
Mikel Landa abandons on stage ten of the 2016 Giro d'Italia
(Image credit: Watson)
Wednesday sees the sprinters come back into play, with a largely flat 227km route with a small sting in the tail in the form of a category four climb shortly before the finish.
