If Egan Bernal goes on to win the Giro and it relaunches his career after a very challenging period, today's stage 11 on the Italian Grand Tour will be pointed to as his moment of rebirth.
He may have already won a stage on the race and climbed better than his rivals, but over the gravel sections today on the 162km road to Montalcino Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) showed no mercy in relentlessly putting his rivals to the sword.
Dan Martin (Israel Start-Up Nation) disappeared from the general classification group very early and spent the day on the back foot, chasing hard for about 60km.
The Irishman lost 9:23 to the stage winner and lost 6:14 to Bernal and slightly mess than that to his other rivals in the general classification. Martin has fallen from 8th to 18th overall, now some 7:06 down on Bernal and almost four minutes off the top 10.
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And while the other big men in the fight for the Giro podium or the top 10 were able to stay in the general classification group initially as Ineos Grenadiers piled on the pressure, they too were distanced by Bernal in the final 20km.
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Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck-QuickStep) looked very uncomfortable on the gravel, especially on the descents. He also seemed to be in dispute with his team or team mate João Almeida. When the young Belgian lost contact with the Bernal group it took a long time for Almeida to drop back from the general classification group to help him.
The day's early breakaway took the first nine places on the stage, with 21-year-old Mauro Schmid (Qhubeka ASSOS) taking the victory in a two-up sprint from 22-year-old Alessandro Covi (UAE-Team Emirates) after those two had pressed clear when the breakaway blew apart in the finale.
Bernal was back the road attacking the general classification group in the finale of the race and gained time on all of his rivals for pink after distancing them at the end of a fantastic ride through the final 70km once the race hit the gravel sections.
Even earlier in the stage and before Bernal began attacking the GC group, once Evenepoel was looking vulnerable Bernal was on the front of the group taking up the work and driving the pace. And on the third sector of gravel, with 25km to go, Evenepoel was dropped.
Bernal finished 11th today, some 3:09 down on the stage winner. Emanuel Buchmann (Bore-hansgrohe) stayed with Bernal for longest and lost just three seconds to him on the line, but all of the other gaps were much bigger.
Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana-Premier Tech) was best of the rest, in 13th place today, but even he lost 23 seconds to Bernal. Next on the road was a small group some 26 seconds down on Bernal, featuing Damiano Caruso (Bahrain-Victorious), Simon Yates (BikeExchange) and Tobias Foss (Jumbo Visma).
Hugh Carthy (EF Education - Nippo) was another six seconds back, in 18th place on the stage and 32 seconds down on Bernal. After Carthy the gaps were much bigger. Giulio Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo) was next to finish and he was 1:45 down on Bernal. For his part, Dan Martin placed 40th on the stage.
Nicolas Roche, whose Team DSM leader Romain Bardet did well for much of the stage before being distanced from the front when Bernal turned the screw in the finale, finished in 76th place and in a group some 18:59 down on the stage winner.
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