Giro d'Italia 2017: Mikel Landa Wins Stage 19, Tom Dumoulin Loses Lead

Sky's Mikel Landa finally grabbed a deserved stage win after two second-placed finishes in the 2017 Giro d'Italia, while Movistar's Nairo Quintana passed Tom Dumoulin of Team Sunweb in the overall standings on Friday. 

With two stages left to go, Quintana now leads Dumoulin by just 38 seconds, with one mountain stage and a time trial still to come.

Here's a look at the stage results, via the Inner Ring:

The current Giro standings:

The final climb toward Piancavallo was expected to provide major fireworks on Friday, and perhaps even cost Dumoulin the maglia rosa.

A group of 14 riders created a gap on the first climb of the day, but the early drama played out in the peloton. Dumoulin suddenly found himself behind the other leaders, with plenty of pundits and fans claiming he was attacked during a comfort break.

Social media exploded once again due to this latest round of controversy, although it later turned out the story wasn't true, via cycling writer Mihai Cazacu:

Dumoulin lost over a minute as Bahrain, Movistar and FDJ joined forces and pushed the tempo. According to sports writer Cillian Kelly, the Dutchman was at least partly to blame:

It took Dumoulin and his team-mates a long time to close the gap, and the maglia rosa seemed to have lost some precious energy in the effort.

At the front, Landa made his move relatively early on the final climb, and he quickly powered away from the leaders on his way to a well-deserved stage win. All eyes were on the contenders for the GC, however, where Dumoulin fell back even before the attacks started.

The first attack came from Thibaut Pinot, and when Vincenzo Nibali and Quintana followed, the Colombian quickly put himself virtually in pink.

Rouleur Magazine's Andy McGrath saw the spectacle unfold and had a simple theory:

Pinot was the strongest of the group and again gained some time, while Nibali and Quintana stuck together, distancing Dumoulin by quite a bit.

The Movistar man is the new leader but faces a real battle to keep hold of the top spot―there's one mountain stage left, before the finishing time trial toward Milan. If healthy, Dumoulin should finish that final stage well ahead of Quintana. Either way, this year's Giro will go down to the wire.