Giro d'Italia Stage 10: Nicola Boem wins from break, Richie Porte loses time

Bardiani-CSF's Nicola Boem has won Stage 10 of the Giro d'Italia in Forli today, the rider from the Veneto region in the north east of the country winning from the break on a day that all predictions suggested should have been a bunch sprint. Alberto Contador remains race leader, but Team Sky's Richie Porte loses time after a late puncture. Astana's Mikel Landa moves third, behind team leader Fabio Aru.

The 25-year-old Boem took the sprint from Matteo Busato of Southeast and Alessandro Malaguti of Nippo-Vini Fantini, the latter missing out on a stage win in the town he was born in following the 200km stage from Civitanova Marche, further down the Adriatic Coast.

Fourth was another rider from the Emilia-Romagna region, Cannondale-Garmin's Alan Marangoni, who had gone for a long one from about 1.5km remaining but was reeled back in with the line tantalisingly in sight.

The fifth rider from the exclusively Italian break, Oscar Gatto of Androni-Giocattoli, succumbed to a mechanical problem with around 20km remaining as it started to become evident that the ecapees might prevail - as indeeed they did, for the fifth Italian stage win of this year's race.

It's Porte's problems that will have the biggest repercussions in terms of the overall. The Tasmanian, who started the day 22 seconds down on Contador, is now 1 minute 9 seconds behind the Tinkoff-Saxo rider and drops to fourth overall following that puncture inside the final 10km.

Early indications are that for some reason, the race jury stopped the race convoy, meaning Porte could not get immediate help from his team car, and the efforts of his team-mates to pace him back on proved to be in vain.

Following yesterday's rest day, meanwhile, Contador looked much more at ease throughout the day and when receiving the maglia rosa on the podium than he had done over the weekend after dislocating his shoulder in a crash late on Thursday's stage.

Reaction to follow.