Giro d'Italia: Viviani wins stage 13 in Nervesa della Battaglia

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Elia Viviani (Quick-Step Floors) put the huge disappointment of the previous day behind him with an emphatic victory in Nervesa della Battaglia on stage 13 of the Giro d'Italia. Viviani had been dealt a blow in the rain in Imola but came back with a vengeance to add a third stage win to his 2018 palmares.

Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe) came from a long way back and didn't have the pace to overhaul the charging Italian with Danny van Poppel (LottoNL-Jumbo) taking third. The win was Viviani's first on Italian soil this season, having won his two other Giro d'Italia stages during the Grande Partenza in Israel.

"It is amazing. After a few difficult days, that's what I needed and the team needed too because they worked hard for two days. They deserve it. Yesterday everyone was worried about it - it was a bad day. We had two or three days really bad, but we are really determined to keep this jersey until Rome, and we really wanted to win after the beautiful start," Viviani said before stepping on the podium.

"Like I said this morning, the sports life is never easy. You win, you lose, you have a good moment, you have a bad moment, you live a dream, the dream is done and then you need to start another dream. Now it's one week to go and we have this jersey. I don't know how it will go, but the important thing is to get back to winning."

Viviani had suffered in the cold and rain of stage 12, being dropped twice in a frenetic finale into the motor racing circuit of Imola. His biggest rival in the sprint, Sam Bennett, stormed to the win while Viviani rolled across the line more than 10 minutes down. Nevertheless, the usually cheery Italian maintained a positive outlook and set out on Friday's 180-kilometre effort with positivity.

Quick-Step Floors were once again one of the prominent features on the front of the peloton but they had plenty of help and allowed Bora-Hansgrohe, Katusha-Alpecin and LottoNL-Jumbo to guide the group through the final kilometres. An attack from Marco Coledan (Wilier Triestina) almost threw a spanner in the works for the peloton, but he couldn't hold off the sprinters behind.

Viviani played it quietly as the others chased, emerging just as Coledan was within touching distance. As Bennett had done the day before, Viviani struck out early and caught the other fast men on the hop. Sacha Modolo (EF Education First-Drapac) tried to follow his compatriot's wheel but Viviani was taking no prisoners in this run to the line. Bennett had been sat closer to the middle of the road when Viviani dived up the left and made up some ground on the Italian but he'd given himself way too much to do and had to settle for second.

Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) finished safely in the bunch to keep hold of his advantage over Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) in the overall classification ahead of a weekend in the mountains.

How it happened

With the mountains looming over the weekend, the sprinters would get one last chance to do their thing in the second week of the Giro d'Italia. There was little resistance to the breakaway going and a group of five quickly formed off the front. The Italian Pro Continental teams were unsurprisingly present, as were a couple of WorldTour interlopers.

Markel Irizar (Trek-Segafredo), Marco Marcato (UAE Team Emirates), Andrea Vendrame (Androni Gioccatoli-Sidermec), Alessandro Tonelli (Bardiani CSF) and Eugert Zhupa (Wilier Triestina-Selle Italia) were the men that made the group. Cautious of the dwindling opportunities, the sprint teams kept the breakaway at close quarters, with the move building a maximum advantage of 3:30.

In previous sprint stages, Quick-Step Floors did most of the pace setting for Viviani but Bennett's commanding stage 12 victory put the onus on Bora-Hansgrohe to help control the gap to the breakaway. Cesare Benedetti spent most of the day on the front, with help from Quick-Step at times.

Marcato and Zhupa shared the honours at the two intermediate sprints with Viviani making sure to snaffle a few points himself to push out his seriously dwindled lead in the points competition. This was a minor show in comparison to what was to come when the peloton came into Nervesa della Battaglia.

The only major mid-stage challenge was the fourth category climb in Motello, 21 kilometres from the finish. It was less testing than the short rise presented to the peloton on Thursday but it still gave rise to a number of hopefuls taking a shot at an attack but they would never make it off with the power of the sprint trains behind.

With the climb dispatched, Katusha-Alpecin took to the front for Baptiste Planckaert and quickly shut down what was left of the breakaway's advantage. The catch was finally made with just six kilometres remaining, signalling a big battle between the sprint teams.

Wilier Triestina's Coledan did his utmost to upset the sprinters but with less than 400 kilometres to go, he was brought back by the peloton with Viviani launching his sprint. The Quick-Step Floors rider got an unassailable gap and rode through to take his third win of the Giro d'Italia.