Gerrans Wins Mountaintop Finish Out of Breakaway in Giro Stage 14

With day after day in this year's Centennary edition of the Giro d'Italia, breakaways have not had their share of luck.  On the flat stages and mountain stages alike, the peloton, controlled mainly by Danilo DiLuca's LPR-Brakes team, has managed to reel in virtually all the main breakaways of each day.

Today, however, the breakway riders made it to the line thanks to their strength in numbers and a bit of luck on the mountainous stage.

Unlike the usual three or four riders that have made previous breakaways, a massive group of 14 got away, featuring Guillame Bonnafond (AG2r), Giampaolo Cheula and Christopher Froome (Barloworld), Vasili Kiryienka (Caisse d'Epargne), Philip Deignan and Simon Gerrans (Cervelo), Giovanni Visconti and Andriy Grivko (ISD), Francesco Gavazzi (Lampre), Francesco Reda (Quick Step), Rubens Bertaglioti (Diquigiovanni), Evgeny Petrov (Katusha), Martin Müller (Milram) and Eduard Vorganov (Xacobeo).

With so many riders working in unison, they were able to outpace the LPR-Brakes-led peloton by around four and a half minutes during the sweltering day. 

That might not sound like very much. Typically, a breakaway needs seven or more minutes of a lead in order to have a chance at holding their advantage later on, especially on a mountain stage. 

DiLuca's team started to reel in the breakaway riders, but not quickly enough. When the gap feel to less than two minutes, the peloton could not gain any more ground.

With the breakaway's chances of being swallwed up looking minimal with around 15 kilometers remaining, the attacks came to fight for the stage. 

Andriy Grivko (ISD) shot out of the break with five kilometers remaining. The Ukrainian rider faced three kilometers of flat roads through the finishing town of Bologna before hitting the brutal, two-kilometer ascent of San Luca, with gradients as steep as 16 percent.

Grivko, more of a time-triallist than a climber, soon met his match, as Froome, Gerrans, and Gavazzi came roaring up the steep slopes. 

Going around a hairpin bend, the maximum 16-percent gradient hit the riders hard.  Gerrans jumped out of the saddle, looking calm, composed, and powerful, while Froome, Gavazzi, and all of his breakaway companions crumbled under the pressure.

Gerrans soloed to win his first Giro d'Italia stage ahead of the remaining breakaway riders Rubens Bertogliati (Diquigiovanni) and Francesco Gavazzi (Lampre).

Meanwhile, behind the breakaway, the GC contenders roared their way up the mountain.  Being an excellent mountaintop sprinter, Danilo DiLuca made a strong surge halfway up the final climb. 

Race leader Denis Menchov (Rabobank) managed to follow the raging Italian along with race contenders Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas) and Carlos Sastre (Cervelo).

Levi Leipheimer (Astana) lost ground on that acceleration and lost three seconds on the day.  It may be an insignificant amount of time, but it might show to his rivals that strong mountaintop accelerations might serve to crack the American on future stages.

Tomorrow's Stage 15 contains four fairly big climbs, a 161-kilometer incessantly hilly stage, but without a mountaintop finish.