We lingered in Matera, the beautiful city where stage 6 of the Giro d'Italia finished and stage 7 started, with crosswinds forecast. They duly came, and, predictably, it was Deceuninck-Quickstep and Jumbo-Visma who went to the front and tore the race into pieces.

In tonight's episode we hear from our diarist, James Knox of Deceuninck, about his sense of trepidation ahead of the stage. We also hear from another diarist, Jacopo Guarnieri, who once again delivered his Groupama-FDJ teammate Arnaud Démare to the win – Démare's third of this Giro.

There are interviews with the young Belgian Harm Vanhoucke, who is riding high but crashed and found himself in the third group for a while, Matt White, the sports director of Mitchelton-Scott, who could be two men down after crashes, and Steven Kruijswijk and Addy Engels of Jumbo-Visma. And of course there's more from Gianni Savio, with his tactical masterplan for the day.

The Cycling Podcast is supported by iwoca and Science in Sport.