DISCUSSION Giro d'Italia Stage 8 | First breakaway win of this Giro's edition, Ulissi as the new leader and Ayuso stealing one second

Stage 8 of the Giro d'Italia saw Luke Plapp taking an impressive and well deserved victory after an all out battle in which the breakaway finally managed to prevail over the peloton. 20 riders formed the break of the day, which took more than 80km to form and showed some levels of ambition rarely seen during the past stages.

The two Astana teammates, Diego Ulissi and Lorenzo Fortunato, quickly realised that they could be in contention to become the new Maglia Rosa wearer, and that is exactly what ended up happening. Ulissi as the new leader and Fortunato in second, while increasing his Maglia Azzurra lead in the process, an almost perfect day for the Kazakh team.

After the stage finished, we asked some of our writers to find out what are their thoughts about today's action:

A proper day of racing, finally! I was happy to see that there was finally a good breakaway battle, often the most exciting part of a few Grand Tour stages. For over an hour we had the pleasure of seeing this take place over flat and rolling roads, but the fact that it was so difficult to form a breakaway - and when one did, we were at the base of the main climb of the day - meant that fatigue was the key aspect of the day.

It wasn't a day where tactics or form mattered all too much, but one where endurance and fatigue resistance proved to be the key in the fight for the stage win. We had a few very strong riders, but almost everyone went to the limit several times and had no legs in the final hour of racing. The final hour wasn't as exciting, but it didn't spoil the day's outcome.

Luke Plapp is a guy who rarely performs at his best, but when he does, he's one of the best in the world, and this kind of solo attack is exactly what he can do well. It would be good to see him transition into a breakaway hunter, and drop his stage-racing ambitions.

It was a dull GC day, but I didn't expect it to be otherwise. Modern cycling is like this, with the mini Strade Bianche tomorrow no-one really wanted to make moves and it's understandable. Still Tom Pidcock and Juan Ayuso did light up the finale.

But the pink jersey changes hands, a good aspect of the day and certainly to a rider who I didn't expect. A rider with plenty of wins in the Giro over the past decade and a half, but it is awesome to see a veteran come away with such a result at this point in his career, and after an unexpected transfer to Astana that seemed to have been the best thing he could've done.

It will likely be only one day, but Diego Ulissi's day in pink will be special, and Lorenzo Fortunato fully entered the GC fight whilst dominating the KOM classification. The wait at the finale was certainly a positive, but I must say if the pink jersey stayed in Roglic's shoulders I would have a lot of criticism and certainly not look at the day as brightly!

Today's takeaway for me is that Primoz Roglic is making friends in the peloton by letting Diego take that jersey and making Italy happy again after a 4 year draught. I saw signs of weaknesses as opposed to Ayuso. He just sat too far on that semi-attack of Pidcock. If he's feeling 100% he should have been first row on that mini climb in the last stage of this stage. Carapaz looks good too.

It's not only Diego's day, but also a bit of an Italian day. The Giro needs it. You see sections where there's almost no one watching. The Giro needs Italian winners.

It seems almost as if Roglic is afraid to give anyone more time than just a handful seconds. Today's breakaway only had Ulissi who won't be able to follow the best in mountains, and Fortunato who will most likely lose minutes in just the upcoming Strade stage and time trial next Tuesday. Still they kept the breakaway on a short leash for a reason that is not clear to me.

Had they given 10+ minutes to the breakaway, it still wouldn't be enough to make any impact in the grand scheme of things. Except they wouldn't have to work excessively in front of the peloton the whole next week...

The best stage of the Giro so far and the most thrilling one, although that wasn’t too difficult after the previous days. It took one week, but finally we saw something that I was missing: a fierce fight for the breakaway and a big and strong enough group that was able to go clear and get the win. The first 80km were brutal, attacks happened one after the other and the break of the day couldn’t be established by any means.

Everyone wanted to be there, so every time a group got a gap on the peloton, there was a team behind that wasn’t satisfied because they were not present in the breakaway or because they wanted to have a bigger representation. There was so much ambition to catch the break and that really made the first two hours extremely entertaining.

The battle didn’t stop after the break was formed, actually what surprised me the most was seeing how many attacks were launched by riders in the break. It was one attack after the other, despite the peloton being so far behind and still with a long day ahead. I would struggle a lot if I had to choose the most combative rider of the day, because I think that ten riders could get that award. A day of endurance and fighting spirit that I hope we see more often.

One thing I didn’t really understand was the way teams in peloton rode despite being Fortunato in front. For me it seemed like they didn’t care much about the possibility of Fortunato climbing to the top of the GC, and I don’t understand that. He placed 12th last year at the Giro already, he performed impressively at the Tour de Romandie just a few weeks ago, even managing to win a stage and finishing fourth overall, and got very decent results throughout the season.

His level has clearly improved this year and he has shown terrific form during this first week, so gifting him more than 3 minutes (which at some point seemed that it could be much more than that) is just a very risky strategy. You can argue that the main favourites Roglic or Ayuso are not too worried about him since he is just 5-6 seconds in front of them and there is a TT left (where Fortunato has never proved to be a specialist, but quite the opposite), but he already has 32 seconds on Tiberi, 38 with Storer, 51 with Bernal…

All this after starting the day 3 minutes behind Roglic. Very similar to what happened with Ben O’Connor less than a year ago during the Vuelta; he was gifted a generous gap as he wasn’t perceived as a threat by the GC riders and ended up in second place, only beaten by Roglic. It seems everyone has forgotten about that, but Fortunato might become the new O’Connor.

A typical stage for Red Bull to drop the pink jersey. A strong breakaway went to the front and at the head of the peloton there was clearly a team with little desire to work and chase. The escape enlivened the stage and the harshness of the route made a natural selection among the best. Luke Plaap decided to attack from the breakaway and no-one had the legs to keep up with him.

At the back, the battle to decide who would wear the race leader's jersey was down to two men: Diego Ulissi or Lorenzo Fortunato. It had been four years and five days since the Giro had an Italian leading its home race. On paper, the day was in the hands of the breakaway, and the breakaway won.

Just like tomorrow, the mini Strade Bianche is destined for the survival of the GC men. It took eight days of racing before we saw any action in the Giro. I find it hard to talk about race strategies, because I've yet to see a team with real GC intentions really play. So far it's been about entertaining the guys.

I think UAE is showing a lot of character in the fight for the overall. I was thrilled to see Juan Ayuso fight the sprint at the end to cut even 1 or 2 seconds off Roglic. They have a hunger that Red Bull BORA hasn't shown yet.

I quite agree with Victor's opinion. We're already a week into the Giro and Roglic's team is still expected to start riding at the height of the race. Not only for the overall, but also because UAE is fighting for the breakaways, like today with Igor Arrieta who was one of the best riders of the day.