ROME (Sky Sports) - Arnaud Demare took his third victory of this year’s Giro d’Italia on stage 13 - his 10th career Grand Tour stage win.
In a thrilling sprint finish, the Frenchman held off Phil Bauhaus and Mark Cavendish, who had fought his way past Fernando Gaviria late on.
This 150km stage from Sanremo to Cuneo was seen as one of only two remaining sprint opportunities in the Giro - and several mountains must be negotiated before the next on stage 18 into Treviso - but a four-man breakaway came within a few hundred metres of glory.
Nicolas Prodhomme, Mirco Maestri, Pascal Eenkhoorn and Julius Van Den Berg had a lead of around three minutes early in the day but saw that more than double on the Colle di Nava as sprint teams nursed their quick men up the 10km-long climb.
That set up a fascinating battle over the remaining 95km as a tailwind helped the front group maintain their advantage, and with two-and-a-half minutes in hand heading into the last 20km, victory looked to be theirs for the taking.
But the peloton upped the pace again and caught the breakaway inside the last kilometre.