The stage winner who turned the Giro d'Italia upside down was Australian Chris Harper, who arrived at the Sestriere finish line solo. Harper claimed his most important victory today, and until the very end, he was not certain he would cross the line first. "The idea was to try for the breakaway, but I wasn't even sure the breakaway would make it to the finish. With the big battle for the general classification, I wouldn't have been surprised if one of the big names had won the stage. Once I took the right advantage, I maintained my rhythm until the Colle delle Finestre and remained alone until the end."

The Giro d'Italia today saw Simon Yates, the British rider who was previously Harper's teammate, triumph in the general classification.

"While I was in the breakaway, I could hear the crowd and then on the Colle delle Finestre, my sports director kept me updated on the time gaps, telling me how far behind the general classification riders were. I then heard on the radio that Simon Yates had attacked and was alone with a quite significant gap from the other classification riders. Then I learned that Simon was with Wout van Aert, and this made me a bit nervous, because I had a strong rider like Van Aert chasing me, and the gap could quickly reduce."

Chris Harper won his first stage in a grand tour, this being his most important success, and he is happy to have won on the day Simon Yates won the Giro d'Italia.

"For me, it's a fantastic day. I couldn't have asked for a better finale to my Giro d'Italia. I had ups and downs during the three weeks, so it's nice to conclude with such a positive result. I was Simon's teammate for the last two years and I've done many races with him and we trained a lot together, and I know how good he is. I'm almost more happy to see him in pink than my stage victory. When I was on the same team with him, I knew he would eventually achieve a result like this, and it would have been nice to still be teammates and share a day like this together."