A good day for the breakaway with a hard stage and some cold weather returning to the Giro.
¡Gracias Movistar!: the early breakaway was swept up on the main climb thanks to the fast pace set by Movistar. The Spanish team quickly cracked several sprinters, first was Arnaud De Lie who soon abandoned. This was the predicted elimination tactic at work, ejecting all the sprinters while allowing their fast rider Orluis Aular to hold on. The first surprise came with Thomas Silva being dropped early, and then more as Egan Bernal was dropped and Gee-West too but apparently the Canadian punctured.
Bernal and Gee would get back on the descent with help from team mates sent back to fetch them, Gee-West still sore from injuries but Bernal a surprise. Visma-LAB could have joined Movistar to ensure the pair lost time, but left the Spanish team to work alone.
Jan Christen took the intermediate time bonus and then made a late attack in the streets of Cosenza but was ridden down. In the finishing straight Orluis Aular tried to complete Movistar’s work but ended up on the too early and could not sustain his sprint. So in the end UAE won, this time with Jhonatan Narvaez. And thanks to time bonuses from the intermediate and the finish Giulio Ciccone is the new maglia rosa with four seconds on Christen.
Kudos to Movistar for trying, sometimes infamous for incomprehensible tactics, this was their rational path to victory and they were only a few metres short. Their loss was our benefit with a lively stage.
It’s also a relief result for Lidl-Trek as they haven’t won a race since Tirreno-Adriatico and while they’ve been close with Jonathan Milan this week, they’ve also been hit with more bad luck because of Gee-West’s crash on Saturday and the big budget team needs days like this.
The Route: 203km and what’s Italian for déjà vu? The last 70km from Viggiano are almost identical. to Stage 7 from 2022. The difference is today is not as hilly as last time, but there are still 3,700m of vertical gain.
It’s uphill from the start including the Valico di Prestieri, a proper mountain pass that should help the breakaway form even if it is not categorised.
The Montagna Grande di Viggiano is the hardest climb of the day, 6km at 9% towards a small ski station. There’s still a long way to go so it’s not quite a launchpad for the stage win but a chance for the climbers to make life hard for the others.
Last time La Sellata, was a proper climb again but this time the approach is across a plateau and so flatter. Altogether it’s a hard stage with a lot of vertical gain but nothing fierce so it makes it accessible to many.
The Finish: a run around the streets of Potenza. It has some of the same roads as 2022 but last time the finish went up a steep ramp to the line, this is on a wider, gentler slope.
The Contenders: with about 125 riders over four minutes down of which almost a hundred have lost ten minutes or more there’s plenty of space to go in the breakaway.
The archetypal winner today is among these riders, does not have any big GC duties today, can cope with the Viggiano climb and quick enough to win the sprint up the false flat. Meet… Michael Valgren (EF) as he fits the bill for a stage like this although he might prefer to go solo than sprint against others. Other suggestions include Magnus Sheffield (Netcompany-Ineos) as a raw talent and attaque de Brieuc Rolland (Groupama-FDJ), he was very active in the Vuelta last year and suited today. But plenty more riders get a chance.
Both Javier Romo (Movistar) and Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X) seem really suited but they’re only three minutes down so will have less room.
If the breakaway can’t form or stick then for the finish we’ll see if Jan Christen (UAE) can play it cool, and UAE have a good reason to chase today because he can win the stage then he stands to gain the maglia rosa, as even if tied on time he’s placed better than Ciccone on countback. So Lidl-Trek have a good reason to let the break go and chase later. Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto-Intermarché) is good for the finish and Orluis Aular (Movistar) can try again too.
Koen Bouwman (Jayco) won here in 2022 but a repeat would be a surprise, team mate Alan Hatherly
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Valgren, Christen, Van Eetvelt |
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Aular, Sheffield, Ciccone, Leknessund |
Weather: yesterday’s hot weather had plenty of riders sweating but today it’ll be much cooler, 14°C in land and some rain showers.
TV: KM0 is at 12.25 and it could be worth watching the fight for the breakaway. The finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Otherwise tune in at 3.40 for for Viggiano and the start of the climb.
Postcard from Potenza
Today’s stage finishes in Potenza and shares many of the same roads as the Giro’s finish here in 2022. It’s the 15th arrival of the Giro in Potenza but only third time this century so it’s hardly a place to be tired of, whether you’re on the race or the sofa.
Grand tours offer a blend of discovery and familiarity and there’s a skill to getting the blend right. New places can intrigue, especially if there’s visual charm. In recent years Alberobello with its trulli stone houses or Matera with its sassi, inhabited stone caves are memorable.
These can delight the race but also offer tourist appeal, important for Italy grappling with “overtourism”, the phenomenon of places being overwhelmed by inbound tourists to the point where locals feel excluded, something that is acute in Rome and Venice, and crucially in certain parts of these cities to the point where a part of town, or even one coffee shop becomes a destination because of algorithmic herding.
The Giro alone can’t divert tourists away from Rome-World or Venice-Park but it can play a role in suggesting there is more to see. Only it struggles to lean into the aesthetics and charms of Italy. Potenza today is not in the top-10 jewels of Italy to put it gently but still has plenty to delight with its squares, cathedrals, theatres and arched gateways. Italy is not short of these.
But the Giro is. Today’s finish is on a bland four lane highway (pictured). Often the stages finishes on the edge of town because it’s easier logistically, or the authorities don’t want to close down the town and upset shopkeepers.
In some ways this makes the Giro a real tour of Italy, a passive celebration of the roundabouts and bypasses used daily by millions rather than tourist traps. But the race could combine the visual with the sporting. The finish of Stage 8 is Fermo will do just this but it feels like the exception on the course.
Great stage yesterday. Very surprised at Bernal losing contact. 14km at 6% is not anywhere hard like is to come. Today will be a harder test. Loving your postcards & found Bulgaria fascinating.
Quite so on Bernal. Even non-climber Turner looked half comfortable with the leaders. Maybe Bernal is unwell but it doesn’t augur well for him on the Blockhaus stage.
Non-climber Turner has this past year turned himself into a relatively good climber for a non-climber.
Opinions are cheap, but it is a mystery to many – including yours truly – why Netsomething-Ineos chose to swap Turner´s perfectly good or at least pretty decent chance of winning the stage for the quite low probability that Bernal will get better and that he won’t have another, even worse off-day which will definitely drop him out of competition for a podium finish.
Ah, probabilities…
If Bernal had been abandoned to his fate then at least some of the many would have been decrying that choice too. Whatever anyone’s cheap opinion of Bernal’s ability at riding for GC in this race that is the stated intention of the team as he is a co-leader with Arensman and teams simply do not abandon GC leaders on stage 4 of a GT without a very good and obvious reason of eg. sickness, previous crashes, etc.
With only three riders in the lead group, two of them your co-leaders on GC, the 3rd guy was always going to be Hobson’s choice if one of the two dropped for whatever reason. Turner was the fall guy. Unlucky. He had every right to ask Bernal what the hell he was doing getting dropped on such a climb. He also had every right to ask Haig, Sheffield and Tarquin Fintimlinbinwhinbimlim Bus Stop F’tang F’tang Ole Biscuit Barrel why they weren’t there either as supposedly more accomplished climbers.
All very well said, same Anon as below? ^___^
I’d underline that Turner could *ask Bernal & C. a thing or two*, like you say, as in “asking THEM personally”, rather than venting his doubts with that passive-aggressive TV public commentary.
The moment… But I guess at the team they’re good managing this situations, their record on that is among the best.
In fact, the following day Bernal released an interview just to express how grateful he was to Turner. Well done.
@gabriele
Bernal has always struck me as a genuinely good and decent guy. It’s heartbreaking that he probably lost his 3-4 best years.
Re: the finishes. Absolutely so. Which is why when we have Benson blattering about the st. 1 finale as “one or two cars wide” (excuse me if inexact, I’m quoting a quote from his newsletter I haven’t read first-hand), it feels like going the wrong direction, and deliberately so. One. Or maybe two… what!? And of course as the average car is under 2 m wide, just blatantly false in any case, just as another sentence reported by the same source where Benson defended “a team bus would have had it hard to go through there” (same disclaimer as above). I hope that’s bad reporting by third parties because Benson knows the meaning of words so it feels like he’s misrepresenting reality for whatever reason, fostering clickbait and polemica in the best case.
And imagine the effect on generalist public… let’s go to the “circonvallazione” or to the “zona industriale” to watch the Giro.
However I remember something similar at the TDF, perhaps the Vire stage, a nice village with a gate tower or clocktower of sort, and the arrival on a huge 4 lanes road in the outskirts. But the TDF today still has a different attraction power on public, whichthe Giro has been losing in the last 5-6 years.
Yes, the Tour can do this too. Mark Cavendish’s win in Saint-Vulbas was a road in a logistics park, sprint stages especially get placed in out-of-town locations. Vire’s finish lacked charm but they wanted more climbing and so it had a steep ramp to the line. Laval did ride along the banks of the Mayenne past the old buildings but then left for a finish on the “rocade” road outside of town for Milan to win on.
Sport and aesthetics can go together because if you have a reduced bunch then you have a fun stage to watch, and then smaller groups can fit through the “portico” into the old town to provide more sport and also visuals.
Today’s postcard is a bit of a lament and could have used Stage 8 to say “yes, now this is how it should be done” for a more positive tone but the subject that day suits something else and it’ll be more positive.
Totally agreed, of course, that’s just why it feels a bit odd to argue against a public-friendly finale like st. 1 (as others did, *not* inrng here) when road width had little to do with the crash.
8 (eight) metres of width available to the riders. Same as Sofia.
But such an attitude of complaining about whatever, irrespective of how pertinent that factor really is in a given case, ends up eclipsing the trade-off implied by demanding Azerbaijan- or California- style highways for every bunch sprint.
Of course, I believe that both kind of roads have their place and moment in a GT and what can be debated is *actual* sense or safety of a given stage finish – if the issue is *really* there, and with consistent references to measures, norms, previous record of comparable situations etc.
As I said, I’m a bit “worried” about Naples, with a fast closing in during the 3-4 km before the flamme rouge, then a 90 degress left bend 600 m to the line where flagstones start and again a U-turn less than 400 m to the line. At least, no rain forecast, which needn’t be an issue, but on flagstones… The slight rise might help keep speeds low, but a lot of athletes will be in the mix spreading their elbows out through those tight corners.
What about Narvaez for back-to-back wins? It was a good stage yesterday with an exciting finale but he won the sprint with ease, really.
I remember Mottet doing two in a row at the TDF when I was a kid. Many others over the years? Asgreen came close didn’t he? Groenewegen won a couple of boring TdF sprint stages back to back I seem to recall. Pogacar has probably done it.
He’s got a good chance today but was thinking if he might prefer to work for Christen to get in the lead. There’s a window for Christen here as he might out-climb Ciccone on Blockhaus but might not too. But will UAE ride together like this, especially with Christen and Narvaez, Christen as the random wild rider and Narvaez said to be leaving the team.
Christen did look very strong yesterday too. Hopefully another good stage.
I didn’t think so to be honest. Christen had a reasonable gap and Sorbrero closed it like a pro catching an amateur in the latter stages of a gravel race!
Haha, are you talking about the WVA footage? That was good.
And Sobrero had been impressive during the downhill chase: during his turns the speed visibly went up and some of the rest struggled to hold the wheels.
Just after the finish, Narváez long made as if not seeing Christen who repeatedly tried to get a hug or handshake until finally he got a pretty cold one. Just an impression? Narváez commenting during the winner’s interview that Christen “is strong but young and needs to learn a lot”, which pretty much suggests that the ahem “strategy” was far from planned and Jan just went for himself and a personal win.
To me, Christen looked good but less brilliant than in previous top shape occasions – wasn’t it for the twisty road, Enric Mas (!!!), not the most explosive or strong rouleur out there, was clearly closing on him, only the latter lost whatever he had gained on every corner he had to drive through.
Anyway, Movistar and Lidl-Trek produced great example of team play, whereas UAE and Ineos not as much, despite achieving their objectives.
Ah, exception for Movistar… Javier Romo: is he a bit unwell, or was him playing for himself and saving energies for today? He was precisely the player which Movistar lacked to bring home the reward of a stage win for all their work. Maybe he was allowed to do so by the DSs, in which case it would be an example of losing it all when giving it -nearly- all – barring a single tiny element.
Koen Baumann?
Chapeau to Movistar for having a plan and sticking to it wholeheartedly. It nearly paid off, but it should boost the team confidence.
Did not look good for Bernal yesterday being dropped, and then Turner being told to drag him back, which Turner was not happy about. If Bernal is dropped again today, will a temmate stick with him?
Visma seem to be toying with the competition so far, and not caring about the leader’s jersey and the post-stage compulsory media duties. Stage 7 should see what Visma can do.
Visma tried very hard for the Red Bull Km (which was amazing as most have been until now, good placing of them on the course), but just came short – 4th for Jonas after an afterburner leadout. It’s like they or Vingo haven’t fully decided what to do excatly, see also stage 2.
Bernal according to Spanish commentators might be affected by some light health issue, even a bad day wouldn’t explain him being dropped like that. Good call by the team, anyway. If left alone, the negative impact would have been huge. That downhill chase was extremely impressive due to the very hisgh speed on the front. Sure, he’s really at risk of losing everything on Montagna Grande today, but bringing home even yesterday’s stage means gaining one more day to recover, and who knows how Montagna Grande will be ridden. During the chase, Turner struggled to hold the wheels when Sobrero got to the front of their chasing group and was finally 4th well behind Ciccone, so I can’t see as justified the fact of airing on TV his bad mood in terms of team spirit.
It’s the Blockhaus blockbuster for Visma. And then the ITT tear-up. And then job done for Vinny.
Maybe…
Strategical dilemma for Ciccone today in order to keep the pink jersey until his home climb of Blockhaus (where he was quite transparent about having little hopes to keep it).
The ideal situation is having a break well ahead, but at controlled distance of course, and a sleepy race behind.
If in the break there’s somebody less than 1-2 minutes behind in GC, it could become complicated to manage. Because if the break is held too close, some other team might decide to give a further pull on the front and rein them back.
Selection of the right break is paramount for Lidl today and Ciccone was doing it him himself on the first climb.
Horrible weather for the first hour, by the way. This should help a calm day in the peloton, but it also could turn it all into a hell of hail and cold rain as it’s been during the last 30 minutes (much better now). Well, some less rain around Viggiano but even colder than now, some 10 degress on the climb.
Picking up on @Gabriele above, that post finish hug was very chilly. I assumed the late move was planned but perhaps Christen really went for himself.
#Tim
Christen seems like quite a character. He’s clearly hugely talented, but I’m curious how he’ll manage the team responsibilities. Mikkel Bjerg had a very public falling-out with him last year, and it doesn’t appear to have slowed down his egocentric pursuits.
Christen is shaping up to be the next Ayuso. UAE clearly excels at spotting and nurturing talent, but their team management seems erratic at best.It only highlights how tragic it would be for cycling if they got hold of Seixas.
Team won only nearly hundred races last year, obviously their management is erratic and they don’t know what they’re doing.
You should apply there to fix their mess.
Jerk
Team management do leave a lot to the riders (the joke is they’re just chauffers for the mechanic). Things have improved since they changed names from Lampre but they remain one of the least structured and prescriptive teams. This works obviously and you can get a lot of people to buy in when you have the biggest budget in the sport.
Classy as always Inrng. Chapeau!
Christen makes Soler look like Tim Declercq
Self quote:
“More than GC, anyway, I think it’s going to be a very interesting edition to follow some specific athletes, many of them young. Van Eetvelt, De Lie, Magnier, Raccagni Noviero, Pinarello, Rondel, Gualdi, J. Christen, Morgado, Arrieta, Eulalio, Segaert, Zambanini, Staune-Mittet, Penhoet, V. Rojas, Beloki jr., Sheffield and more, sure I’m forgetting…besides the obvious Pellizzari & Piganzoli”.
Well well, Segaert and Beloki were notable today for their difficulties with rain jackets, but I’m quite satisfied with a good part of the rest ^___^
Barring De Lie. Obviously.
Wow, gabriele. Do please tell us all what it’s like being just sooooooooo great.
Generally it’s nit bad, but the best thing of it all is the Anon comments you get!
It’s easy for any mouse to criticise others online. Hiding behind anonymity doesn’t help with open or fair discussion and debate. This blog is so good partly because the comments lack the petty bile and vindictiveness elsewhere online.
Gabriele may sometimes write too much about viewing figures ; ) but, over the years, I’ve found his comments about tactics and strategy to be hugely illuminating.
I have a question about something that occurred today in Stage 5.
The Tudor rider had crashed into the back of the UAE team car, and it took the commentators of the TNT / HBO broadcast several minutes before they could report reliably and accurately what had happened off-camera.
Does the Giro not have a “radio – Tour” type of program that the organizers use to report such incidents to the teams and the broadcasters?
I’m also curious about this… the rear window was smashed through, so it wasn’t a trivial thing!
It seems that, in this Giro, UAE are so accident-prone that even their team cars are getting hurt 😉
There is race radio but not people to report things everywhere, eg in the middle of the convoy of team cars, so when one car braked hard, the UAE car slammed on their brakes too and Rondel went into the back there was no video. Italian TV had the news quite quickly but no video of the incident.
Thank you INRNG.