Grabovskyy was caught with 22 km (14 mi) left to race, and Euskaltel–Euskadi's Pablo Urtasun took the opportunity to counter-attack, being joined after a short while by Niki Terpstra from Team Milram.

They were away until the 8 km (5.0 mi) to go mark, and another move took shape when they were caught, including Terpstra's team leader Linus Gerdemann and Matti Breschel.

Despite never holding even ten seconds advantage over the main field, and not having an appreciable gap over them at the finish line, they were able to contest the stage among themselves and deny the pure sprinters the chance.

They built up an advantage of over four minutes, while race leader Linus Gerdemann's Milram team rode a tempo at the front of the peloton.

Various teams representing strong sprinters worked to reel in the escape toward the end of the stage, and three of them were caught 3.5 km (2.2 mi) from the finish line.

Ignatiev tried to counter-attack as the catch occurred, but the blazing speed with which Liquigas–Doimo was driving the peloton at the time meant that it was only a few seconds until the Russian too was brought back.

By virtue of being in the breakaway for the second day in a row, Caccia took the lead in the mountains classification after the stage from his teammate Dmytro Grabovskyy.

The main field was all together for a sprint finish, but this was nearly not the case, as ten riders broke away on the descent from the last climb, including overall contenders like defending champion Michele Scarponi, last year's runner-up Stefano Garzelli, and the Liquigas–Doimo duo of Vincenzo Nibali and Roman Kreuziger.

Unlike the previous day, Bennati used it to his full advantage, winning the stage over Alessandro Petacchi, Bernhard Eisel, and Tyler Farrar.

The seven escapees were Rubén Pérez, Vasil Kiryienka, Marco Frapporti, Maarten Wynants, Paolo Longo Borghini, Vladimir Efimkin, and Italian national champion Filippo Pozzato, who did much of the pacemaking for the group.

The break still had 3 minutes on the main field with 25 km (16 mi) left to race, though several riders tried escapes from the peloton before the breakaway was caught, indicating that they did not believe the group could stay away.

Race leader Michele Scarponi's Androni Giocattoli team set a furious pace to control the main field, even though two of its riders crashed hard.

José Serpa finished the stage, continuing to take pulls at the front of the main field, covered in dirt with a blood-streaked face meagerly patched up by a bandage.

The best-placed riders in this group were Paul Martens of Rabobank and Simon Špilak from Lampre–Farnese Vini, respectively 1'36" and 1'48" back of race leader Michele Scarponi as the day began.

As the end of the stage neared, the main field had closed the gap to under a minute, meaning Martens and Špilak did not stand to threaten Scarponi's overall lead.

The one who got away was Team Katusha's Mikhail Ignatiev, a time trial specialist who shed his breakaway mates with 8 km (5.0 mi) remaining and was able to pace himself to the line for the stage win.

A hectic final kilometer for the race's top contenders was resolved when Stefano Garzelli and Cadel Evans broke away from a small group containing Scarponi.

Scarponi retained the race leader's blue jersey heading into the final day, but by a margin of just 2 seconds to Garzelli and 12 to Evans.

In the second intermediate sprint, 20 km (12 mi) from the line, Ginanni and Androni Giocattoli teammate Jackson Rodríguez easily took the first two places, but Acqua & Sapone successfully led Garzelli out to again get third.