Astana's Mikel Landa has won stage fifteen of the Giro D'Italia.
With Alberto Contador back in the pink jersey after his second place in the time trial, stage fifteen was a 165km stage from Marostica to thethe high mountain top finish at Madonna di Campiglio in the Dolomites, a place where the late Marco Pantani was disqualified from after winning the stage in 1999, after failing a doping test and an event from which he never recovered.
It started without Kristoff Vandewalle (Trek Factory Racing) and Oscar Gatto (Androni Giocattoli) and meant that 177 riders took to the road with the riders setting off at a quick pace.
Fabio Felline (Trek Factory Racing) and Francesco Bongiorno (Bardiani CSF) tried to get away but were unable to do so and with forty kilometres ridden a group of around twenty riders were in the lead with a small gap.
With speeds of 47.9kmh in the opening hour, stage eleven winner Ilnur Zakarin led a group of eleven riders which was trimmed down to just the Katusha rider with Movistar duo Benat Intxausti and Giovanni Visconti.
Intxausti took the points on the first KOM La Fricca climb and on the descent, Serge Pauhlino went after the three escapers followed by Team Sky's Kantsantsin Siutsou.
Pauhlino caught the three out front as did Siutsou, Hubert Dupont and Matteo Montagutti of AG2R, Diego Rosa of Astana,Francesco Gavazzi of SouthEast and BMC Brent Bookwalter and they took a lead of 2.41 as Clement and Ruffoni abandoned.
With fifty five kilometres left, Siutsou, Bookwalter, Dupont and Visconti had gone away on the start of the second sprint at Ponte Arche Terme as the rest of the chasing group sat up. Siutsou took the points as the quartet led by three minutes.
Through Daone and the gap was down to a minute to Gavazzi as they started on the Passo Daone which is a category one climb, 8.4kms long with a 9.2% average gradient rising to a 14% maximum with Bookwalter who was struggling with the pace and dropped back.
Contador was tapping a decent pace on the wheels up the climb to take the distance down to the escapers to 1.52.
Intxausti came out of the peloton to get some points in his KOM campaign and took them ahead of his rvials as the Maglai Rosa group was reduced to around thirty riders.
Atapuma of BMC crashed as did Igor Anton of Movistar who needed treatment from a team car, as the gap to Contador's group dropped to 48 seconds with 21.5kms left.
Contador dived out to take two points in the sprint at Pinzolo behind Dupont 1before they started on the climb up to the finish at Madonna di Campiglio, with an average of 5.9% ramps which go up to 12% in the final kilometres.
Contador kept his eye on Fabio Aru of Astana but allowed Cannondale-Garmin's Ryder Hesjedal to get slightly ahead before Kangert, Landa, Contador, Aru, Konig, Trofimov, Aamador, Kruijswijk, Geniez and Caruso came back to take over.
Geniez was dropped. as the gap back to Hesjedal went out to 1.52.
There was 2.8kms to go when Mikel Landa went but Alberto Contador marked him before Aru and Trofimov brought them back.
Aru put in an attack with two kilometres left but Contador was straight in his wheel. Landa attacked and again Contador followed.
Trofimov suddenly came out of nowhere and went under the flam rouge with a small gap.
Contador and Aru had a conversation but Trofimov was away. So Landa went past him and the Astana rider took the win in 4.22.37 with Trofimov second, Contador third and Aru fourth, Stephen Kruijswijk came home 35 secinds down, with Amador 39 seconds down, nineteen seconds before Konig.
Alberto Contador maintains his lead in the race going into the second rest day with a 2.35 lead over Aru.
Mikel Landa said: "We have a good team for the climbs and for me this was the best part of the Giro.
"We want to finish with Aru in the best positiion we can but it is difficult to try and break Contador."