Esteban Chaves is still struggling to come to terms with how his Giro d’Italia hopes went from looking up to being turned upside down.

The Colombian slid down the general classification after falling behind on the first climb of Stage 10 last Tuesday.

He had earlier won the Mount Etna stage (Stage 6) and was sitting pretty in second place overall behind Mitchelton-Scott teammate Simon Yates – the current race leader.

The 25-minute loss, however, put him down in 39th. The next day he lost another five minutes as his hopes of victory were ended.

The disastrous 10th stage followed the first full rest day and may have been part of the problem. Some riders do not perform well after a rest day.

A week has passed but Chaves is still not sure of the reason behind his woes, and he has yet to undergo deep medical checks to try to find out what happened.

“That will take time for sure,” he told VeloNews. “There is no one-word answer from one day to the other or one night, now we just need to fight for the pink and this is it.”