Giro d’Italia: Rit 10
end
0306090120150196
After Mads Pedersen, Magnus Cort (EF-EasyPost) also completed his trilogy in this Giro. After a rain-soaked stage, the Dane was faster than flight companions Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) and Alessandro De Marchi (Jayco-AlUla). A thinned peloton fell short after a chaotic stage. Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) remains leader.
Ride 10 in a nutshell:
- Winner of the day: Magnus Cort Nielsen has his hat trick. After stage victories in the Tour and the Vuelta, he has now also scored in the Giro. The Dane was by far the fastest of the leading group of three after a grueling and rain-soaked day in attack.
- Loser of the day: There goes Jay Vine’s GC ambitions. The 27-year-old shadow leader of UAE Team Emirates crashed into a wall on the descent of the Passo delle Radici and would never reach the front of the race again. The damage: 11 minutes and 19 seconds.
- Remarkable task: It was a striking image in the early stages of the match. Podium candidate Aleksandr Vlasov immediately had to let go. What turned out? The Bora-Hansgrohe leader drove around sick and would eventually also retire from the race.
- Morning: The peloton will face a similar course tomorrow. The longest stage of this Giro – no less than 219 kilometers – is again 2,100 meters in altitude, but the bumps are less robust than today. Is it up to the sprinters this time?
Platoon arrives at Cort
The show must go on.
And so the peloton left today in the Giro without leader Remco Evenepoel for the tenth stage. There was some doubt about shortening the ride to 70 kilometers due to the harsh weather conditions, but after many Italian fives and sixes, the riders simply braved the heavy rain.
After a nervous battle of attrition in the mountainous initial phase, a strong refugee quartet quickly formed with tastemaker Magnus Cort Nielsen, Alessandro De Marchi, Derek Gee and mountain jersey Bais Davide.
The classic cat-and-mouse game followed, but was mainly colored by overestimation and strange maneuvers from the peloton.
Fernando Gaviria let his team play for the executioner in the mountainous initial phase, but eventually fell prey to his team’s pounding. Bahrain-Victorius in turn tried it in the descent, but spearhead Jonathan Milan also fell to the ground during the kamikaze action.
The escapees – who had already left Bais in the meantime – laughed up their sleeves and finally dived into the last 10 kilometers with a one-minute lead.
The flashbacks clearly flashed through the head of De Marchi – who was still caught by an oncoming peloton at the end of the sixth stage – and this time he did not take any risks. The Italian played for a locomotive in the last kilometers and especially put Magnus Cort in a seat.
The Dane thanked for the ideal lead-out and sprinted relatively easily to his first victory in the Giro. Magnus Cort has thus won the Grand Tour triple, he previously won the Tour and the Vuelta.
It was mustache for the Dane.
Cort: “Perhaps the hardest day of my career”
“I’m so happy,” said a visibly jaded Magnus Cort. “It was such a hard day because of the rain and the cold, maybe one of the hardest days I’ve had on a bike. Winning is unbelievable.”
It was a chaotic ride. “I was not really aware of the price situation. My radio malfunctioned and I had little information. The peloton kept chasing and we didn’t have much of a chance, but we managed anyway. It was all worth it.”
Thomas: “Not an ideal day to wear pink”
“Today the conditions were not ideal to wear the pink jersey,” says the new leader Geraint Thomas, who neatly summarizes the course of the race.
“The fight to slip along in the breakaway was immediately tough, when we got to the top of the climb it was fairly cold and we also had to pay attention on the descent. A solid race day, then.”
“A lot has happened along the way, but I’m glad I made it. Now we have to look at it day by day. Anything is possible, especially with this weather. Every extra day in pink is very nice for me. “
Tchou, tchou: all aboard the Giro-express.
