Italian celebration on Valentine's Day with Christian Scaroni winning the stage accompanied by his teammate and blue jersey wearer Lorenzo Fortunato. In third place, an excellent Giulio Pellizzari, who after the withdrawal of his captain Primoz Roglic, fought until the end to win the stage.

«On days like this I am able to perform at 110 percent, because I love rainy days, perhaps I still struggle a bit on descents after the bad crashes I've been involved in - Scaroni said in the press conference - During the stage I was feeling better and better, we first thought about consolidating the mountain jersey with Fortunato, then on the penultimate climb to Santa Barbara, we pushed hard, we remained seven and maybe right at the foot of the last climb we understood we were the strongest».

Lorenzo Fortunato and Christian Scaroni ride together for Astana, but beyond being teammates they are also good friends.
«Fortunato and I had talked before the last climb and we had told each other that, if things went this way, he would let me have the stage victory because he had already secured the jersey. He was a man of his word because in the last kilometer I was completely exhausted, but despite this he waited for me, because there was a decent gap to the third place, so he was a man of his word and I can only thank him for the rest of my life and with him the entire team».

Things have not always gone right for Scaroni and in this season, where he had started well, he was then forced to stop.

«When you fly high and then fall, you get hurt more. I had a start of the season where everything was going very well, with three victories, many placings and convincing performances. Then I was suddenly forced to stop and found myself at home on the couch waiting for this bone edema in my shoulder to heal. It was one of the worst periods and I must thank my family and especially my girlfriend who always assisted me during this time. Then I started training slowly and I knew the start of the Giro d'Italia would not be easy for me, in fact during the first week I went through difficult days and then from the Vicenza stage I started to feel my leg coming back like in the best days and I believe that between today and the other day, I have shown that I am back in my best condition. Now we have other stages to think about before celebrating and we will try to be competitive always».

Today Italy could have reached the sad record of sixteen stages without an Italian victory, but fate decided otherwise and the entire podium was occupied by Italian riders. «For days I had heard this rumor circulating, where I don't remember from which year it had not happened that in the first 16 stages no Italian victory arrived. We always try to do our best, I'm not speaking only for myself but for all the riders racing in this Giro d'Italia. We know the level is very high, I don't want to say we are going through a difficult period because the riders are there, but emerging is increasingly complicated. Today fortunately I was the one who broke the spell and there couldn't have been a better day for me and my team».

For XdS Astana, important results have been arriving for months, and the fight for points in the UCI ranking is also yielding results. In this Giro, Ulissi also did well wearing the pink jersey and then there's Lorenzo Fortunato leading the climbers' classification. «It's certainly a very consolidated group, we all know each other well and then we've brought riders like Diego Ulissi, Alberto Bettiol and Mike Theunissen into the team, people with experience who have ridden for great teams. This has also allowed riders of medium or good level like me to take that extra step and race with more intelligence and optimize results».