Huge day in mountains arrives for Almeida and Giro rivals | Video | Sticky Bottle

João Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep) has taken the race lead and slowly built his advantage on the Giro d'Italia. Whether he can win overall will become clear soon enough, perhaps as early as today's stage 15 (Photo: Marco Alpozzi)

João Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep) faces a huge test on the Giro's stage 15 today, Sunday, as the summit finish looked set to test if he is capable of winning the race overall.

The 22-year-old from Portugal has ridden out of his skin so far and on yesterday's stage 14 TT he gained time on all of his rivals and now has a comfortable lead over them.

The 34.1km TT was won by Filippo Ganna, his third victory
of the Giro, from his Ineos Grenadiers team mate Rohan Dennis by 26 seconds,
with Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates) in 3rd at 1:09.

Almeida finished in 6th place, some 1:31 down on Ganna. He beat Wilco Kelderman (Trek Segafredo) by 16 seconds, increasing to 56 seconds his lead over the 2nd place rider on GC.

*Nibali is still firmly in contention but the time he has lost means he must ride well and others falter at the same time (Photo: Gian Mattia D'Alberto)*

Pello Bilbao (Bahrain-McLaren) is now 3rd overall at 2:11, McNulty is 4th at 2:23 and Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo) is 5th at 2:30. Rafal Majka (Bora-hansgrohe) is 6th at 2:33 while Domenico Pozzovivo (NTT Pro Cycling) is 7th also at 2:33.

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Jakob Fuglsang – somehow a pre-race favourite despite being 35-years-old and never having finished in the top three in a Grand Tour and with only one top 10 finish in fourteen attempts – is now back in 12th at 4:08.

Almeida is riding his first Grand Tour and seems to have expended a lot of energy so far. However, in an unusual year and at a time when young riders are doing so well, if he were to hold on for overall victory it would be fitting.

*Wilco Kelderman is in a great position; 2nd overall and with a real possibility race leader Almeida has already dug too deep into his reserves with a hard week remaining (Photo: Massimo Paolone)*

Kelderman seems his most likely challenger and is definitely within striking distance, as is Nibali though his GC position requires the challenge of others to collapse, especially Almeida and Kelderman.

With a very hard week to come – if Covid-19 allows and if bad weather doesn’t claim some of the hardest climbs, the Stelvio included – today is the first in a series of big tests,

The stage finishes atop the Piancavallo, at the end of 185km of racing and having already tackled three earlier mountains.

If Almeida is still in pink after the final ascent – 10.1km at 8.9 per cent - he will have put down a deposit on outright victory, though there is still (hopefully) a lot of racing to be done.