Farnese Vini rider Oscar Gatto edged Spaniard Alberto Contador to win the eighth stage of the Giro d'Italia today.
With two kilometres to go, Gatto went hard for the line and although Contador was in close pursuit, the 26-year-old Italian held on for the biggest victory of his career in Tropea.
Contador finished four seconds behind while Italy's Alessandro Petacchi was third.
Rabobank's Pieter Weening will spend a fourth day in the pink jersey as the leader of the race.
Philip Deignan continued to struggle finishing the stage 2m18s down in 173rd place. He dropped slightly to 148th in the overall standings and is 42m20s down on Weening heading into Sunday’s decisive Sicilian stage which features two ascents of the Mount Etna volcano.
After four straight days of hills, the sprinters looked forward to making their mark on the 217-kilometre stage that runs along the Tyrrhenian coast.
Leonardo Giordani (Farnese Vini) and Mirko Selvaggi (Vacansoleil) pulled away from the peloton early on.
The pair built an advantage of 10 minutes and 15 seconds ahead of the pack but as they entered the feeding zone at Paolo with 120km to go, their lead began to dwindle.
They were still in front by five minutes with 40km remaining in the stage.
However, with Quickstep leading the peloton that gap decreased considerably and with 7km to go, they were finally overhauled.
Garmin then set a rapid pace at the front of the pack, yet in the last two kilometres, Gatto and Contador stepped up their bid to win and it was the Italian who prevailed with the partisan home crowd cheering him on.
The Quickstep and HTC teams of Petacchi and Britain's Mark Cavendish had no answer on the afternoon.
Despite Saxo Bank's Contador inability to catch Gatto on the day, the pre-race favourite benefitted from the 12 bonus seconds his runner-up finish has given him ahead of tomorrow's ascent of Etna.
