BMC Racing Team's World Champion Cadel Evans conquered the wet and muddy conditions on the 224 kilometer ride from Carrara to Montalcino to win the seventh stage of the 2010 Giro d'Italia. Team Astana's Alexandre Vinokourov now wears the Maglia Rosa as the overall race leader.

Wet and winding Tuscan roads turned the Giro d'Italia on its head on Saturday when Alexander Vinokourov (Team Astana) regained the overall lead from the unlucky Vincenzo Nibali (Team Liquigas).

World champion Cadel Evans of Team BMC Racing moved up to second after winning the seventh stage, just ahead of Damiano Cunego and Vinokourov, after the trio made the last of a series of breaks by riders on a very rainy and cold day. (Check out our pre-Giro interview with Cadel Evans).

Part of the route took place on unmade roads and mud continually splattered up at the riders with Vinokourov having to wipe dirt from his eyes as his yellow and blue Astana jersey turned brown.

"Today it was hard. The last 40 kilometers were as difficult as you could imagine," the Kazakh, who returned last year from a drugs ban, told reporters after the finish.

It was a slippery asphalt road rather than a muddy track which was the undoing of previous leader Nibali in the rolling hills.

The Italian Liquigas rider fell with team mate Ivan Basso into a ditch and looked injured as he struggled to start up again.

"Let's see how I recover from the pain," he said.

Vinokourov holds a healthy one minute 12 second lead overall from Evans with Nibali down in fifth place, 01:33 adrift.

"It's been a stage where the word spectacular does not even describe it," BMC Racing Team's Evans said.

"It's an important step but let's see as we've got lots of mountains to come."

"I think second (overall) is a good position to be in right now," Evans further said and added "We'll see tomorrow how the first true mountain stage goes. There's a long way to go before Verona. It's a stage that was suited for me and we prepared for well for it. The course reconnaissance we did paid off."

BMC Racing Team Director Sportif John Lelangue said words could not describe the horrific conditions - something he hadn't seen in 20 years in the sport. "Winning the day wasn't really the plan this morning, but there was a time bonus, so that helped," Lelangue said. "I'm really proud of all the guys and the staff, who worked hard to prepare everything for today. We changed Cadel's BMC at 120 km (as planned) to make sure we had good Easton wheels and we had people stationed on the dirt roads with another spare BMC and wheels."

Sunday's eighth stage from Chianciano Terme to Terminillo climbs into Italy's central region of peaks.

The Giro has been dominated by crashes this year and one of the pre-race favourites Marzio Bruseghin pulled out before the seventh stage because of injuries from a previous fall suffered on the dangerous roads in the Netherlands.

The three-week race ends in Verona on May 30.

Stay tuned to us here at Roadcycling.com for complete 2010 Giro d'Italia coverage including video highlights from the race and visit www.universalsports.com/cycling for live video from the Giro.

View more photos from the rainy and muddy stage 7 of the 2010 Giro d'Italia on our stage 7 results page and stay tuned to our videos section for video highlights from the stage.

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