Lennard Kamna won stage four of the Giro d’Italia and Juan Pedro Lopez took over the leader’s pink jersey as the breakaway took the honours on Mount Etna.
Richard Carapaz led home a group of overall favourites that included Simon Yates – who recovered from an early spill – a little over 2½ minutes after Kamna sprinted clear of Lopez to win his second career grand tour stage.
Bora-Hansgrohe’s Kamna and Lopez were the last survivors of a 14-strong breakaway that went away early on the 172km stage from Avola, but splintered at the start of the 22km climb to the finish.
Lopez reeled in an early move from Stefano Oldani but was then caught by Kamna with 2.5km to go.
The Trek-Segafredo rider tried to challenge Kamna for the win but almost crashed on the final corner, and had to settle for taking the pink jersey from Mathieu van der Poel, who rode in as part of the grupetto.
The win for the breakaway injected some big gaps into the general classification, with Yates dropping from second to fourth and seeing a 14-second deficit grow to one minute 42 seconds, though the riders in front of him – Lopez, Kamna, and Rein Taaramae will be of little concern.
The Briton was caught up in an early crash and had a couple of visits to the doctor’s car for treatment on his right knee, but showed no ill effects at the finish.
Others were not so lucky. Miguel Angel Lopez, Colombia’s main hope in this race in the absence of reigning champion Egan Bernal, abandoned early in the day with a left hip injury.
And things got worse for his Astana team when Sicilian Vincenzo Nibali, the main most likely to inherit the team leadership, was dropped by the peloton on Etna.
Tom Dumoulin, the 2017 Giro winner who took a break from the sport last year, showed he is not in the shape to contend this year as he too was dropped towards the finish.
“I’m just not feeling good,” the Dutchman said on Eurosport. “I worked hard to get here in the best shape possible. I just don’t have the legs.”
