Buongiorno and welcome to live coverage of stage 9 of the Giro d'Italia - an Apennine mountain-top showdown on the Gran Sasso d'Italia in a long 225km stage from Pesco Sannita.

The six leaders - Boaro, Visconti, Cherel, Carthy, Masnada and Brambilla - are combining well. They're onto a slight rolling piece of this climb with the odd downhill dip. The gap has stabilised at 3'30". This is a very scenic climb with the riders crossing open grass plains with jagged peaks on the horizon.

Froome is down to just Kiryienka and De la Cruz now. He looks pretty uncomfortable, to be fair, and has Tom Dumoulin in his wheel. Astana still have four on the front, including Miguel Angel Lopez.

Carthy, Boaro and Visconti have managed to bridge over, while Belkov and Berhane try to follow suit but I doubt they'll ever see them again. We're now onto the Cat.1 ascent of the Gran Sasso d'Italia proper. It's 26.5km at 3.9% and a maximum of 13%.

Benedetti is off the back and Wellens is also struggling. It's Cherel, Brambilla and Masnada who have opened up a small gap over the others. Just 3'20" back to the pack.

The gap continues to tumble and the break has fallen apart...

Astana lead the streamlined pack through the summit with the gap down to 4'07".

Didier, who did the early pacing on the climb, appears to have been dropped by the break, so Brambilla has lost his team-mate. And yes, here Didier is being caught by the peloton - along with Turrin... they're still on the final bit of the climb.

It's Fausto Masnada who takes the KOM points over the summit of the Cat.2 Calascio ahead of Cherel and Benedetti. He did take the points on the last climb to Roccacaso but they were taken away from him because of that push from his team-mate Ballerini. There follows a very short downhill and then a false flat ahead of the next uphill rise.

Boaro keeps on putting in little accelerations on the front in a bid to shake some of his fellow escapees. As they approach the summit there's some movement in pursuit of those points.

Just 4'30" now for the leaders, who have seen their advantage halved on this climb thanks to Astana's pace-setting. The peloton is still about 80-strong and Astana are now down to five riders after another match is burned.

If it's sunny here on the apron of the Gran Sasso d'Italia then that's not the case up on the summit, which is in the clouds and being battered by wind. Such are the conditions that the audio connection with the comms team keeps on cutting out.

Alex Turrin has cracked. The Italian from Wilier Triestina is the first of the escapees to drop off the back. He's shaking his head to his directeur sportif, clearly unable to match his colleagues' speed.

Manuele Boaro is the first rider to try something from the break. The Italian ups the tempo and takes compatriot Brambilla with him. The rest follow but Hugh Carthy is, for now, rooted to the back.

The break are just over halfway up this climb and there's no significant descent as a reward going over the top before it starts to rise again towards the foot of the final ascent. Their lead is down to five minutes now.

Just six minutes now for the break thanks to this injection of pace from Astana. Sky have formed their own train around Froome right behind. It's all going to blow apart on the final climb, isn't it?

All 14 of the escapees are still together on this climb as they pass under the 40-to-go banner. Astana, meanwhile, have seven of their eight riders on the front. Chris Froome has moved up through the pack and nestled in behind Sky team-mate David de la Cruz right behind the Astana train and in front of Simon Yates and his Mitchelton Scott team-mates.

Astana are piling on the hurt and a gruppetto has already formed. Meanwhile, Ruben Plaza picks up a puncture and swaps his front wheel with a Israel Cycling Academy team-mate. It'll be a struggle to get back on but the former Spanish national champion is a decent climber and so should be ok.

Didier is still setting a hefty tempo on the front of this climb, an amuse-bouche to the Gran Sasso main course. Astana's acceleration behind has seen the gap plummet to seven minutes.

Meanwhile, back in the pack it's Astana who have thrown down the hammer. They need a good result for their man Miguel Angel Lopez, who is 2'12" down on GC. Six of the Astana team are now setting a strong tempo and stringing out the pack ahead of the climb, which for them is about to start.