A day after seeing his hopes for a victory in the Giro d'Italia thwarted, Mikel Landa came back with a vengeance on Stage 19. Heading up Friday's final climb to Piancavallo, Landa surged past his fellow breakaway riders to solo to a summit-finish win and cement his grip on the king of the mountains classification.

After the early chaos on Friday morning, the peloton eased back on top of the Sella Chianzutan climb. The stage quickly calmed compared to the frantic start to first 100km. Riders attacked to form the final break of the day. They pulled out a gap of over 12 minutes with 32km to go. Pierre Rolland (Cannondale-Drapac) made the cut yet again in search of his second stage win at the Giro. The summit finish made it a good opportunity for the French rider to fight for another victory. Team Sky was positioned well to challenge Rolland with two strong climbers in the break: Sebastian Hano and Landa. After narrowly missing a stage win on the previous day to Tejay van Garderen, there was no doubt Landa was going to be highly motivated. Luis Leon Sanchez (Astana) and former world champion Rui Costa (UAE) also made the selection.

Rolland began attacking at 24km to go. Being the lone Cannondale-Drapac representative at the front, he wanted to break apart the leaders as much as possible in an attempt to eliminate the support riders in the group. Nothing stuck until Sanchez made a big effort to escape from the group. As they hit the climb, attacks came fast from multiple riders and the cooperation splintered. Costa escaped up the road in pursuit of Sanchez. Landa was the next to follow. After catching the leaders, the Spaniard dropped Costa with 9km to go, at which point it was his race to lose. Rolland put in a late surge to gradually bridge up to Costa.

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With those two strong riders working together there was potential that they could bring back Landa, but the Sky rider proved too strong. Landa continued to extend his gap to over a minute on the chasers. Working solo all the way to the finish line, he sat up and fully enjoyed the ride down the finish straight. It's a great result for Team Sky after a disastrous crash which broke all of their GC hopes early on. They can now leave with a stage win, and Landa is well placed to win the overall mountains classification.

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More 2017 Giro d'Italia Coverage

• Stage 20 Recap
• Stage 20 Results
• Complete Giro Results
• Tom Dumoulin Was The Real Winner On Stage 20
• Tom Dumoulin And Vincenzo Nibali Getting Heated At The Giro
• Mikel Landa Wins Big For Team Sky
• Tejay Van Garderen Redeems Himself With Giro Stage Win
• Tom Dumoulin Loses Time During Emergency Bathroom Break
• More Giro Articles