Michael Rogers took a solo victory on the feared Monte Zoncolan as Nairo Quintana tied up the leader’s maglia rosa on the penultimate stage of the Giro d’Italia.

The 34-year-old Rogers benefited from a controversial incident inside the final three kilometres as he battled with Francesco Bongiorno. A fan tried to give the young Italian a helping hand, but succeeded only in pushing him into the Australian’s back wheel.

Bongiorno’s rhythm was broken just for a second, allowing the Tinkoff-Saxo rider Rogers to race away to a second stage win on this Giro – a little more than a month after the former Team Sky rider returned to competition after being cleared of a doping offence.

The Bardiani rider Bongiorno lost so much momentum he eventually finished third on the stage, with Androni Giocattoli’s Franco Pellizotti coming through for second place.

After an afternoon of incredibly hard work in north-eastern Italy, Rogers told Eurosport: “It’s really worth it. It’s amazing. It’s always been a dream of mine to win a mountain-top finish like that. Monte Zoncolan is a great climb and to win like that is amazing.

“It’s steep, it’s one hell of a climb, but it makes it all the more better. These climbs, Zoncolan, Stelvio and Gavia are huge climbs and to win is every cyclist’s dream.”

A little more than five minutes behind Rogers, Movistar’s Quintana crossed the line with his general classification rival Rigoberto Urán just behind him to assure the 24-year-old Colombian, second in last year’s Tour de France, of overall victory in his first Giro.

Omega Pharma-Quick Step’s Urán, who finished second in the 2013 Giro when racing for Team Sky, had to settle for being runner-up once again, and the young Italian Fabio Aru did enough to claim third place on the podium for the Astana team ahead of Sunday’s final run into Trieste.

This brutal penultimate stage to a testing Giro began with 20 riders going up the road in an early breakaway. Rogers was accompanied by his team-mate Nicolas Roche, and Sky’s Dario Cataldo, a regular in this Giro’s breakaways, was present once more.

The group began the climb of the Monte Zoncolan with an advantage of around seven and a half minutes, but the group soon fractured as the hardest mountain in professional cycling took its toll.

The riders passed under a banner labelled Le porte dell’Inferno – the gates of hell – at the foot of the climb, and it was no joke as the final 10km of the stage sent the riders up gradients reaching 22%.

Rogers, Bongiorno and Pellizotti made their move with around five and a half kilometres to go, but Pellizotti could not keep up.

It was a two-horse race until the spectator’s unfortunate intervention but Rogers left no doubt about it from then on as he raced clear.