Nairo Quintana knew what was coming. Ahead, the last ramp of the climb to Mottolino from the top of Livigno hardened to a cliff-like 19%. A little further down the mountain, Tadej Pogağar was approaching him at an astonishing knot speed.

The possibility that Quintana would land safely before Poganyar passed him was slim enough to not exist, but he stuck to his course as much as possible at the closing Kimol of the 15th stage of the Giro d'Italia.

Quintana, a member of a fairly early break of the day, attacked the 20km remaining Passo di Foscagno, catching and passing a fellow fugitive, Georg Steinhauser, near the summit of the climb. But by then, the word had been filtered out that Poganyar had struck out alone from his favorite group. There was a strict inevitability about the procedure from there.

Quintana still had 4 seconds to hit the last 40km climb to the line, but for this Pogagnar iteration, a more robust flood defense was required. The Colombians began to leak time on the lower slopes and within the final 2km the slope was wiped out a bit as well.

The man who won this race a decade ago was enough to hold for second place while Pogañar restricted the last slope to put another hefty deposit on Trofeo Senza fine. Quintana crossed the line with a 29-second delay from Poganyar and congratulated herself for doing so. It was his best result as he was disqualified from the 2・year Tour de France after testing positive for Tramadol 2022.

When Quintana stopped over the finish line, he held himself to the barrier while Movistar's Soigneur helped him to the jacket. He leaned over the handlebar and buried his face in the towel for a while. By the time he looked up, a scrum of microphones and cameras had been built around him. He nodded to start the postmortem.

"Que valiente, Nairo" was the opening gambit from Colombian television. However, with the Giro's finish line tumultuous on a narrow road at an altitude of 2,385m, it was no different. At this point, all queries are essentially variations on "what was going on there".

"It was a stage that I liked, and the altitude got higher," Quintana said. "We've made great efforts since the first day of the Giro. All this year was difficult. But we are here.

"It's emotional, what can I say. It's emotional. It's a shame that we didn't finish first, but Poganyar was, as we know, very strong and very solid. He was saying he was going to challenge the stage and that's what he did. The important thing was that we tried, that we worked very well as a team. And now let's hope that we can continue in the same way.

When Quintana and his fugitive Passo di Foscani were still armed for more than 3 minutes in the Maglia Rosa group, Pogagnar claimed the Tappone of the Giro, but in the final calculations, his superiority did not cause debate.

Altitude and slope may have been in Quintana's favor, but all the momentum was that the young man was climbing the mountain and stalking him. Quintana did as much resistance as he could, but Poganyal, who spent almost 3 minutes on GC rivals, was not denied.

"The tactics of the last ramp were just accelerating and accelerating," Quintana said. "I knew those lamps were very hard, but I just gave everything to me. Finally, I had to go pretty steady.

While Quintana's career seemed to have ended in the winter of 2022, he broke up with Arkea Samsik after taking a positive test for tramadol and elsewhere, but after spending the 2023 season as a bystander, Quintana was given an unexpected lifeline by his old team Movistar last fall. i was thrown a fly.

There was something quite in favor of this move. Quintana desperately needed the team to revive his career, and Movistar struggled for traction in the post-Valverde era, marketable but Quintana's 2nd act at Movistar had problems. He was infected with COVID-2 in Tour Colombia on May 19 and crashed from Volta, Catalonia on May 3.

After first targeting GC at the Giro, Quintana's ambition for this race was downgraded to hunting for victory on stage. He fell short of that goal on Sunday, but in the context of the last few years, he has not been able to couch his second place as a defeat.

"It's very tasty," Quintana said. "I would like to thank you for giving me these opportunities, for being my team and for bringing me home," he said.

Quintana went home last winter, but he knows he can't turn the clock back all the time. He is no longer the rider who won the Giro d'Italia 10 years ago. The point was highlighted when Poganyar soared in the past and later returned home at Maglia Rosa's press conference, when he remembered seeing Quintana's fight with Chris Froome about 10 years ago.

"I was always angry that I didn't attack Nairo early and tried to break Froome from the outside even more," Poganyal said. "He was always waiting for the last 3k or something.

In the Alps on Sunday, Quintana went from afar, as the young Poganyar demanded, but a new reality overtook him. There is nothing to do. "He's very strong and very solid," Quintana said of Poganyal. "He can win whatever he wants."

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