Cadel Evans refuses to be daunted, warning there's a long way to go after surprisingly yielding his Giro d'Italia leader's jersey to Colombia's Rigoberto Uran.
The hilly 42km individual time trial of stage 12 was expected to play to Australia's 2011 Tour de France champion Evan's strengths and pad his lead at the halfway mark before the grand tour heads toward its big mountain stages.
But Uran had other ideas as he produced the time trial of his life on Thursday to finish fastest by 1m37s from Italy's Diego Ulissi with Evans a further 17 seconds slower in third place.
"I worked a lot on my time trial, spending time in the wind tunnel over the winter, but today surpassed my expectations," Uran said.
"It's too early to say the race is over. We still have not raced the hardest mountains yet. The most difficult part of the Giro is still to come."
Evans now sits in second place overall, 37 seconds down on Uran, but still well placed to challenge for victory.
"I saw Uran coming into form but I honestly did not expect him to have such an amazing time trial," said Evans, noting the other top times were all quite close.
Evans admitted tricky conditions made him cautious in the closing stages.
"Everything went well in this Giro until yesterday but I went a bit slow today," he told cyclingnews.com.
"I started steady and increased my speed but the road was very slippery and so I went slow on the descent and on the second climb to stay safe - but then it was the same conditions for everyone."
A weekend of mountain stages in the Alps now loom and Uran's Omega Pharma Quick-Step team now have the onus of defending the maglia rosa (pink jersey).
"It's going to be interesting," said Evans.
"I think we'll see a new team with the responsibility to control the race.
"There's still a lot of Giro yet to be raced and the results of (Italy's fourth-placed Domenico) Pozzovivo showed that he's still in the game too.
"Let's look to the future. This Giro is still very long."
The biggest loser of the day was GC contender Ivan Basso (Cannondale) who crashed during the stage and dropped out of the top 10.
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