Nicolas Roche and Philip Deignan depart first key period of Giro d'Italia polls apart

Nicolas Roche rides alongside team mate, and leading young rider in the Giro d'Italia, Rafal Majka on yesterday's stage 9 in the mountains.

Nicolas Roche's and Philip Deignan's reward for another tough day in the mountains at the Giro d'Italia yesterday comes in the shape of a second rest day today, but with completely different perspectives on the race a week after leaving Ireland for Italy.

For Team Sky's Deignan, it's a case of job done thus far. The Donegal man showed some really good form on the Tour Down Under in Australia at the start of the season, and it looked like the return to his best he enjoyed with Unitedhealthcare in 2013 had followed him into the New Year.

However, before he could really test that theory he crashed out training, broke his collar bone and was side-lined for six weeks. He managed to get racing again in the weeks before the Giro and rode well in the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali stage race in Italy.

Starting the Giro, and with no team leader for the general classification in the absence of Richie Porte, he said he planned to try and ride himself into the event for the first two weeks considering he had missed so much racing.

His plan has been to keep his powder as dry as he can until the final week, when the stages are very tough, and make efforts to go in breakaways in the mountains in the hope he can put himself into a stage-winning position.

Writing yesterday in his stickybottle diary he said he was pleased with how he felt, though his form was hard to fully assess when he was not climbing at full effort.

The fact he has managed to stay upright (touch wood - Ed) in recent days given the amount of crashes the wet conditions have caused is a real bonus. And as the race reaches its second rest day today, his pre-race plans are still intact.

Roche on the other hand came into the race as co-leader of the Tinkoff-Saxo team with Rafal Majka and aiming for the overall classification. However, those plans were well and truly wiped out when he crashed on Friday's stage and was then forced to wait by the roadside for a prolonged period to change his damaged bike.

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He ended the stage minus a lot of skin on his left hip and having lost 15 minutes. He can still aim for stage wins and is undoubtedly still capable of pulling a result out of the bag before the race ends.

But the fact Majka has ridden so well and is now 3rd overall and leads the young riders classification means the Irish man may be restricted to team duties to try and protect those gains.

His situation is a far cry from where he hoped he would be by now when the action got underway in Belfast last weekend.

On yesterday's stage 9 in the mountains to Lugo, Roche came home in 50th place, 3:53 down on stage winner Peter Weening (Orica GreenEDGE).

The Dutchman had gone in the early breakaway and attacked from it to ride up the finishing climb with just David Malacarne (Europcar) for company, beating him for the win.

Deignan was 76th at 10:02, but that time loss simply contributes to him being too far down for the favourites to worry about if he has the legs to make some key breakaways in the final week.

May 9th-June 1st: Giro d’Italia

May 18th: Stage 9, Lugo to Sestola (172km)

General Classification