Giro d'Italia 2014 - Stage 9

The mountains continued on the Giro d'Italia with stage nine, a 172 kilometre race from Lugo to Sestola. The stage was backlogged with climbs, with three in the final fifty kilometres of racing. Cadel Evans went into the stage holding a healthy lead over his nearest challenger Rigoberto Uran, and would be looking to protect this lead going into the second rest day.

The stage start was a fast one, and a breakaway didn't actually get away until after fifty kilometres a fourteen man group escaped from the peloton. Men in the group included Orica-GreenEDGE's Pieter Weening, Salvatorre Puccio (Sky), Jackson Rodriguez (Androni Giocattoli), David Tanner of Belkin, Oscar Gatto of Cannondale, among others.

The group quickly established some organisation, and their lead quickly breached four minutes. The maximum it went up to was over eight minutes, with BMC just making sure things were controlled back in the peloton. Garmin-Sharp put in a couple of big efforts to bring back the move, but their gap wasn't budging, the peloton started to get anxious, bringing Movistar and Lampre-Merida to the front.

The breakaway mopped up all of the intermediate sprint and king of the mountains points on offer, with BMC Racing controlling affairs in the peloton on the descent to the final climb. Fabio Aru had a brief mechanical but was soon back on his bike, but Belkin's Steven Kruijswijk finally abandoned after fracturing his shoulder on stage six.

As the gap closed to three and a half minutes, with nineteen kilometres to go, Pieter Weening attacked his breakaway companions. This shattered the breakaway group, and on the final climb only Davide Malacarne of Europcar was able to catch up with the flying Dutchman. The two leaders worked well together, as Domenico Pozzovivo attacked the peloton on the final climb.

No one went with Pozzovivo, but he soon had thirty seconds on the peloton. It was soon apparent that Malacarne and Weening would contest the stage win, and going into the final kilometre, it was almost a track sprint. Weening eventually took it, ahead of the Italian Malacarne. Pozzovivo gained thirty seconds on Evans, but would still sit over a minute down. Evans had defended his maglia rosa through another tricky mountain day.