Peter Sagan of Tinkoff Saxo, had his first win for nine months when he took the win on the Tirreno-Adriatico Stage Six.
A penultimate 210km stage from Rieti - Porto Sant'Elpidio saw Stijn Devolder (Trek Factory Racing), Yukiya Arashiro (Europcar) and Alessandro Vanotti (Astana) out in front with a lead of 1.30 after twenty kilometres of a stage which had seen 169 riders start.
That lead went out to five minutes but dropped to four minutes with one hundred kilometres left and 3.02 to the peloton which included race leader and Nairo Quintana of Movistar some twenty kilometres later.
Onto the Montelparo climb and their lead was 3.10 in appalling weather but thanks to good work from Tinkoff Saxo and the main GC contenders who had got themselves into a chasing group which was a minute ahead of what was left of the peloton, it was down to forty seconds with sixty two kilometres remaining.
The trio were not surprisingly caught on a very wet afternoon ten kilometres later and Vanotti launched another attack with 34kms left, whilst Mark Cavendish was in a group that was now four minutes behind the peloton.
Vanotti took the second sprint of the day to herald the start of the two closing laps of fourteen kilometres.
Alexis Vuillermoz of AG2R who was second in the sprint joined Vanotti and they were twenty five seconds ahead of the blue jersey group and 5.25 ahead of Cavendish's group which looked to contain around thirty riders.
Going into the last lap and their lead was eighteen seconds on very wet roads in Porto Sant'Elpidio, which saw the race go past its desolate beach.
Vuillermoz jumped Vanotti with 12.7kms and went off on his own, staying away until there was 3.2kms left.
Lampre Merida had riders on the front as Fabian Cancellera brought up some more riders on the left.
Matt Goss led followed by Van Rensburg as the riders went under the flam rouge.
Edvald Boasson-Hagen led out the sprint but it was Peter Sagan who took his first win in nine months in 5.04.13, beating Gerald Chiolek of MTN Qhubeka and Jens Debusscherre, followed by Magnus Cort, Axel Richeze, Boasson-Hagen, Arndt, Sam Bennett, Navardauskas and Lutsenko.
Nairo Quintana leads Bauke Mollema by 39 seconds going into the final 10k individual time trail which starts and finishes in San Benedetto del Tronto.