Pozzovivo's next objective was the Giro d'Italia, but things got off to a bad start: after losing time on the opening team time trial, he lost more than a minute on the second stage because of a crash. On stage 3, the following day, things took a turn for the worse as he crashed head first on a descend with to go. Shortly afterwards, AG2R reported that he was in a stable state, even though he appeared to be bleeding heavily from his head region on television pictures. On the same night, he passed a CT scan which revealed no brain injury and talked to Gazzetta dello Sport: “It was a long night and I even made some plans for the future,” said Pozzovivo. “I was in the best condition of my life and I’m thinking about returning at the Tour de Suisse and being competitive.”