Nibali storms to mountain time trial victory

Baring a collapse of epic proportions, not seen by a Grand Tour leader since Floyd Landis at the 2006 Tour de France, Vincenzo Nibali will this weekend pick up the trophy as the 2013 winner of the Giro d'Italia. Today, tomorrow and Saturday were to be his final test, but this afternoon when he stormed up the climb to win the individual time-trial by 58 seconds over his nearest rival, Samuel Sanchez, he ensured the next two days would be a formality.

The result increased his lead in the general classification over Cadel Evans to 4 minutes, 2 seconds with Rigoberto Uran in third at 4'12". Evans had a terrible day by his standards finishing 25th more than two and a half minutes behind Nibali. Having started three minutes up the road from the Italian, Evans was another few hundred meters away from being caught and passed. All Evans can really do now is keep the pressure on, try and attack and hope that a disaster befalls Nibali. That's not likely to happen though and the real battle is for podium positions. Michele Scarponi is the man outside the podiums looking in, just 1'02" behind Uran.

Sure it would have been nice to have seen healthy Bradley Wiggins and Ryder Hesjedal at this stage of the Giro to see what kind of challenge they could pose to Nibali and it sure would have added more spice to the mountain time-trial, but you know, Nibali has just looked a class apart in May 2013 and despite Hesjedal's form a year ago and Wiggins's form in last years Tour, this is Nibali's Giro and I'm not sure anyone would have beat him in his current form.

Tomorrow's mountain stages were designed to hopefully see the final fight for the Pink jersey but things don't always work out that way. We were treated to a fight to the final day last year, but this time one man has crushed the field. These final mountain stages will be a victory lap for Nibali from which he can defend, conserve and maintain his lead. Or maybe he'll want to ram home his dominance and go for another stage win and extend his margin of glory.