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Nieve wins stage 13 of Giro d’Italia as Amador takes over Race Lead

Team Sky celebrated a stage win Mikel Nieve. The Spaniard solo'd to victory after attacking on the penultimate categorized climb of a mountainous stage from Palmanova to Cividale del Friuli.

Movistar’s Giovanni Visconti rode solo to second place, and Astana’s Vincenzo Nibali sprinted to third.

Stage thirteen moved the focus away from the sprinters and shifted attention back towards the general classification. The first of three consecutive mountain stages and including four categorised climbs over 170 km and 4,000 metres of climbing.

The stage is also the route of the Cividale del Friuli Gran Fondo on Sunday May 22, where thousands of amateur riders will ride the same stage as the Pro's did today.

Attackes started from the begining and 45 km in, a group of no less than 30 riders had a minutes gap on the peleton at the base of the brutal climb of the Montemaggiore.

As the gradient rose to 10-15% the breakaway began to thin. The Lampre-Merida lead breakaway began to accelerate away from the peleton containing the pink jersey of Bob Jungels (Etixx - Quickstep).

Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal) went on the attack from the Peleton taking sevral riders with him.

Aftter around 50 km Stefan Denfil (IAM-Cycling) was soloing off the front of the breakaway with Damiano Cunego (Nippo-Vini-Fantini) and Ulissi a minute behind,

Lampre-Merida and Cannondale shared efforts in the main breakaway group that had a gap of 2 minutes and 30 seconds with 70 km to go.

With 57 kilometres to go the breakaway pass the finish line for the first lap with a three minute advantage.

Etixx-Quickstep were chasing hard, stringing the peleton out work for Bob Jungels with over 2,000 metres of climbing over the final two climbs.

Astana now came to the front and upped the pace and the breakaway's advantage started to fall.

Joe Dombrowski (Cannondale) and Nieve attacked the breakaway group along with Giovanni Visconti (Movistar).

Astana's hard pace reduced the peleton to around twenty riders including all the GC contenders.

Nieve dropped Dombrowski halfway up the penultimate climb two minutes ahead of the chasers with Visconti just 30 seconds behind the Sky rider.

On ethe last climb Nieve had around two minutes advantage of what was left of the peleton containing GC favorites Valverde and Nibali.

Such was the pace, Bob Jungels was dropped and soon after Rigoberto Uran (Cannondale) and Amador.

With 15kms to go Nieve had 40 seconds over the chasers that included Nibali, Chaves and Valverde. Two of Nibali’s Astana teammates were also on the front.

Nibali attacked with 13 kilometres to go but was closely followed by Rafal Majka (Tinkoff), Valverde, Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNl – Jumbo) and Chaves.

Visconti was desperately trying to make contact with Nieve but never quite made it.

The chasing peleton came back together on the descent with Uran and Amador getting back on and being dropped. The group were two minutes down on Nieve with six kilometres to go with the pink jersey of Jungels a further 40seconds back as the race hit the flat road to the finish in Cividale del Friuli

Nieve crossed the line alone to take the stage win.

Visconti second on his just behind.

Nibali sprintedto third place for bonus seconds.

Amador moved into the race lead as Jungels lost time on his rivals after failing to regain contact on the final descent.

Tomorrow stage 14 is the Queen stage and climbs some of the toughest climbs of the Dolomitesincluding the legendary climbs of the Passo Giau and Passo Pordoi. The stage gets increasing harder and covers six categorised climbs with over 5,000metres elevation which will make for an epic stage.