Nairo Quintana (Movistar) blasts to stage 9 victory in Blockhause, Italy.

Nairo Quintana (Team Movistar) destroyed the pack to win crash marred stage 9 in Blockhause, Giro d'Italia.

 The Colombian attacked several times on the brutal ascent, and although Thibaut Pinot (FD) and Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain Merida) were able to hold during several initial surges, both were powerless when Quintana accelerated away with around 5 kilometres to go Quintana's decisive attack cracked Nibali completely, leaving Pinot, Tom Dumoulin and Bauke Mollema to lead a brief fight back. With 2,000 meters to go Quintana held a 25-second lead and that advantage was reduced by one second on the line with Pinot finishing second, and Dumoulin third, before bonus seconds.
 Mollema finished fourth on the day, while home favourite Nibali took fifth, 59 seconds down on Quintana.

 Bob Jungels (QuickStep Floors) was unable to retain his overnight lead and was dropped on the early slopes of the climb. While Quintana took the spoils and the lead, the stage was marked by a huge crash that took down Geraint Thomas, Mikel Landa and Adam Yates. The trio were among the fallers after Wilco Kelderman (Sunweb) clipped a poorly placed race motorbike on the lower slopes of the final climb.

Thomas and Yates started the day in the top three but were left on the deck and from their both riders were forced to limit their losses. How it unfolded With a short stage, only 149 kilometres, and a very nasty finish, the day's breakaway would be a futile affair.

But almost immediately a group got away nonetheless: Alexey Tstatevich (Gazprom-RusVelo), Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo), Marco Marcato (UAE Team Emirates), Omar Fraile (Dimension Data), Jan Tratnik (CCC Sprandi Polkowice), Matteo Montaguti (AG2R La Mondiale), Luis Leon Sanchez (Astana), Matteo Busato (Wilier-Triestina) and Iljo Keisse (Quick-Step Floors) had trouble establishing a gap but soon got away successfully.

 Three riders tried to join them: Pierre Rolland (Cannondale), Tomasz Marczynski (Lotto Soudal), and Sacha Modolo (UAE Team Emirates) dangled in between, as the group took off and the peloton turned things down a notch. The trio was unable to make much headway, and so Cannondale turned on the turbo and started giving chase.
The gap to the first group had grown to 4 minutes, and the American team brought it down a minute, as the three in the middle came nearer to the break group. Finally, the three made contact with the lead group, to the latter's displeasure. Rolland was too good a climber and could easily destroy the chances of the others in the group.

However, at 10:33 down, he was too far back to be a worry for the GC candidates. With 89km to go, the gap was 2:51. Cannondale had done their job and retired from the lead work, with Movistar taking over the work. The long hard chase may have cost Rolland though, as he appeared to struggle at bit at the back of the break group.

 The gap was coming steadily down, and was at about 2.30 at the halfway mark, and continued to fall. The two-minute marker came with 68km left. It went back up again, though, with Movistar still at the head of the field.

 The cat-and-mouse continued, with the gap growing and shrinking. Fraile took the second intermediate sprint, at the top of a hill in Chieti and the peloton leisurely following at 2:38. From there, though, the speed picked up, the peloton lined out and the gap came down under the two-minute mark. It hit the one minute mark with 34 km left, Movistar still doing the work.

 Bahrain Merida and Sky moved up to the front, and the lead group started up the climb with just over 30 seconds. That lead group soon started falling apart, as Marczynski, Tratnik and Rolland were the first to take off, and the rest were caught with about 24 km to go. The new leading trio held onto a 10 to 13-second gap, but Rolland was soon out of the group as the field approached.

Movistar caught them with 22 km left and turned on the speed yet again.
Numerous riders started falling off the back. Disaster struck with 14km to go when a race motorbike parked on the verge to the left of the peloton, but the riders were so closely hugging the side of the road that Sunweb's Wilco Kelderman clipped the motorbike and crashed straight into the Team Sky train.

 Mikel Landa, Geraint Thomas and Adam Yates all hit the deck with a number of other riders, and while Thomas took the longest to remount, he found his rhythm and sped past Landa as the climb continued. Kelderman was forced to abandon. Up ahead, Movistar were setting a blistering pace, and Quintana could no longer contain himself and, with 6km to go, he attacked and pulled away Nibali and Pinot.

The FDJ rider put in a couple counter attacks, to no avail. With 4.5km to go Quintana kicked and opened up a gap on the pair. The ensuing chase cracked Nibali, while Pinot was feeling the effects of his aggression.
 The damage was done behind the three men up front: Jungels slipped well out of the overall lead.

Tejay Van Garderen (BMC) cracked, but Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb) put in a steady effort to reel in the leaders with Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) on his wheel. As Quintana soloed to victory, Nibali was picked up and spat out by Dumoulin.

Pinot, too, was reeled in and held on, but soon Dumoulin's pace distanced Mollema. The Frenchman sat on and out-sprinted Dumoulin for second on the stage, but it was Dumoulin who was the main factor in limiting their losses to 24 seconds.


 Top Riders in General classification after stage 9


 1, Nairo Quintana (Colombia) Movistar Team 42:06:09   2, Thibaut Pinot (France) FDJ 0:00:28,
 3, Tom Dumoulin (Netherland) Team Sunweb 0:00:30,  
4, Bauke Mollema (Netherland) Trek-Segafredo 0:00:51,  
5, Vincenzo Nibali (Italy) Bahrain-Merida 0:01:10,  
6, Domenico Pozzovivo (Italy) AG2R La Mondiale 0:01:28 , 
7, Ilnur Zakarin (Russia) Katusha-Alpecin 0:02:28,  
8, Davide Formolo (Italy) Cannondale-Drapac 0:02:45,  
9, Andrey Amador (CRc) Movistar Team 0:02:53,  
10, Steven Kruijswijk (Ned) Team LottoNl-Jumbo 0:03:06