After 4 years, the pink jersey has returned to the shoulders of an Italian rider, Diego Ulissi, who recounted his emotions with some emotion. The last to wear it was Alessandro De Marchi, another "old guard" of Italian cycling.

«We started with the intention of trying to compete for the stage, I had to try to get into the right breakaway. We thought today could be the right day, and I must say that all my teammates did a great job. Plapp was superior today and deservedly won, but I'm really happy with how it went».

Racing on Italian roads is always a great emotion and even more so when the public encourages you during the race. «In the finale, people on the roadside were telling me to go all out, then I knew how much of a gap I had and that I could take the pink jersey. So in the finale, I thought only of giving my maximum even though I was extremely tired».

In the final kilometers, the Astana radios were not working, and Ulissi, although he had the perception of doing well, did not precisely know what was happening in the race.

«In the finale, the radio was bad, barely audible, and I think it was also a team decision not to communicate my advantage to me. It was the right decision because, even though I'm experienced, I might have been distracted or blocked if I had thought too much about the jersey. They knew I was there and fighting for the Pink Jersey, so they just told me to go all out».

Last year, Ulissi did not participate in the Giro d'Italia due to choices made by his former team UAE Emirates, so this year, being in the Giro and wearing the pink jersey is truly a great satisfaction for him.

«I'm not someone who gets emotional easily, but when I saw the Pink Jersey with the XdS Astana writing, I was emotional, I confess. I'm almost 36 years old (I'll turn 36 on July 15th, ed.) and in such occasions, you relive your entire career. And I've had a beautiful career, I've had some great satisfactions, I've even managed to overcome particular moments. Then I thought about my family: in these 16 years with Arianna, I've built a beautiful family, we have three daughters (Lia, Anna, and Viola), I thought about my parents, my grandparents, all the sacrifices they made since I was little to take me to races, to help me start racing. I thought about all this when I put on the pink jersey and I was moved».

Tomorrow the race will be on the roads of Tuscany, Diego Ulissi's region, and it would be wonderful for him to keep the pink jersey after the finish line in Siena.

«It's already a great satisfaction to have won eight stages in the Giro d'Italia - the first one back in 2011 - then with age, it's not easy to remain at high levels. Cycling has changed a lot since I turned professional, back then you matured much more slowly, today 20-21-year-olds are already ready to win, and it's normal that my approach to this profession has changed. When you're over 35, you look for other motivations, and that's why I changed teams, to find new motivations and to try to experience days like this. My choice has been rewarded, and I'm extremely happy because we at XDS Astana are having an extraordinary year».