Trek gambled in today's Giro d'Italia stage when they waited until the 50km mark to start chasing down the breakaway. It proved to be too late but it was all part of a pre-race plan of tiring out Nacer Bouhanni's FDJ team.

Today was a stage that was supposed to end in a mass sprint - a day for the sprinters - at least on paper. But cycling, so often controlled and predicable for these flat stages, can once in a while throw out a shocker. And today it did.

Perhaps, it was because the stage was unlucky number 13, maybe it was a result of the tactical game being played, or it could have been from a lot of tired legs in the peloton; whatever the reason, the six-man breakaway that set off early in the 157-kilometer stage was never caught. Instead, the six split in half and the three strongest succeeded to the end.

Marco Canola (Bardiani CSF) won the three-up sprint, taking his biggest victory in the most prestigious race for an Italian.  A mere 11 seconds later the peloton stormed across the line with Nacer Bouhanni (FDJ.fr) first of the bunch in a photo finish over Giacomo Nizzolo.

“First of all we need to say bravo to the breakaway," sports director Adriano Baffi said. "They never had more than three minutes and they worked very well to the end - it was a great performance.

"For us, we were not able to close the gap with the other teams, and we lost an opportunity. But we did what we wanted to do. Today we tried to make Bouhanni’s team do the work so that he would have less teammates with him for the sprint.

“We did our job in the chase; I don’t think we started too late. We started at 50k to go and normally with 50 to go and a two-minute gap it’s fine.  Maybe it was the weather conditions and the roads? It wasn’t good for us that the breakaway arrived to the end, but for them it was nice – they worked well and it was a deserved win.” 

There were no changes to the top positions in the overall classification. The first taste of the high mountains arrives for tomorrow’s stage 14 where Robert Kiserlovski will once again test his great climbing form, while Julian Arredondo will keep an attentive eye on the mountain sprints points to protect his comfortable lead in the blue jersey.

“Tomorrow is a very hard stage," Baffi said. "I know the last climb because I went to see it. The GC is not finished; tomorrow can be a day where we see some more changes. What we know at this point is who are the strongest riders, and anyone of them can have a bad day. If that happens we need to profit from it. We will see.”