Wilco Kelderman entered the Giro d'Italia as one of Bora-Hansgrohe's final overall classification hopefuls, but bad luck on the stage to Brockhaus dashed his ambitions. Despite a successful breakaway on stage 12, which brought her 8:11 back from the pack and within 3 minutes of the classification, the Dutchman said that she was not thinking about the overall.

"I wanted to go for the stage win, but there were too many riders in front of me," Kelderman said after finishing fifth from the big breakaway.

"GC doesn't matter to me anymore. I just don't like the long climbs. It's still really far; I have to go up even one minute to get to GC. I'm not good enough to compete for GC. Jai (Hindley) and Emu (Buchman) are in really good shape and I think they can make the podium."

After a frenetic first hour of racing that lasted about 54 km, Kelderman emerged in a group of 22 that formed the winning move of the day. He was 11:02 behind race leader Juan Pedro Lopez (Trek-Segafredo) for the lead in the standings, but his indifference to GC was palpable.

As a result, the breakaway was left to fight for the stage win in the two Category 3 mountains of La Coletta and Valico di Trencasco in the last 55km. In the former, Lorenzo Rota (Intermarque Wanty-Gobert Materio) attacked and formed a three-man breakaway group. Kelderman was chased by Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo), Lucas Hamilton (BikeExchange-Jayco), and Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain-Victorias).

The three Alpecin Phoenix riders were in the breakaway group, which gave the eventual winner Stefano Aldani the advantage. Once the trio of Lotta, Oldani, and Gijs Riemreis (Jumbo Visma) went clear, Kelderman said they were too strong to pull away.

"I was running for about fifth. I thought I could open up a little bit later. I think Alpecin and Wanty had a really good race.