General Classification Standings
As previewed yesterday, Lennard Kamna really ended up winning today’s stage. He beat Juan Pedro Lopez in a two man sprint that propelled the latter to the pink jersey. It will be interesting to see Trek Segafredo’s approach from now on with Lopez in the race lead. It only took one mountain stage to prove wrong the dreamers that put Bauke Mollema, Giulio Ciccone and Mattias Jensen ahead of Lopez in the team’s pecking order. Mollema and Jensen already lost 5 minutes today and are both already more than 4 minutes behind the Spanish rider in the general classification (GC).
Ciccone, to his credit, finished the stage inside of the group of favorites, and is “just” 2m32s behind his teammate in the GC. If Trek wants to bet on a rider that never finished above 16th in a Grand Tour (GT) and hasn’t finished one in nearly 3 years that’s their prerogative. To be fair, Juan Pedro Lopez might have arrived at the Giro simply to hunt for a stage win and he might not be in the shape required to fight for a top-10 in the GC. Now that he is in pink, though, and looking at the team’s options, he certainly seems like the logical choice.
Focusing back on the stage, some interesting things happened, certainly more than I was expecting, even though the stage unfolded largely as expected: breakaway win + a large group of favorites getting to the line together.
Miguel Angel Lopez
The Colombian succumbed to a left hip injury. Not much to say here but to wish a speedy recovery to the rider from Astana. The Kazakh team is decimated by the loss of its only realistic GC hope. Nibali arrived nearly 5 minutes behind Kamna today and is already more than 4 minutes behind in the general classification. The best the Italian icon can achieve is a stage win which, at this stage, would save Astana’s Giro. David de la Cruz, 7th in last year’s Vuelta, would be Astana’s next logical GC hope but he lost nearly 23 minutes today. So stage wins it is for the Kazakh outfit.
Tom Dumoulin
3rd in GC at the start of today’s stage Dumoulin was the first favorite to lose the fight for pink. He finished the stage in 53rd place, 9m10s behind the stage winner. I admit I was hopeful for a good performance in GC from the Dutch rider but now see the error of my ways. The day was just horrible for Jumbo Visma, since Tobias Foss (9th last year) and Sam Oomen (9th in 2018) also lost nearly 5 minutes to Kamna, and roughly 2m30s to the group of favorites. This doesn’t exclude either rider (likely Foss is the team’s preference) from fighting for the top-10, but it does make it harder to significantly improve upon those previous 9th places.
Guillaume Martin
I never had much faith in the French rider for this Giro but maybe he wants to make it 3 top-10s in a row in the 3 GTs. He lost 1m30s to the group of favorites which by no means takes him out of contention for that goal. But it is not a great sign to lose so much time to a group that included 17 riders.
Ineos Grenadiers
The British team showed their strength in the Etna, dominating the race for the majority of the climb. In the end, though, they don’t have much to show for their efforts. They burned through most of their team (only Carapaz and Porte arrived in the main group) but gained no time on their rivals.
Simon Yates
The Brit went to the medical support vehicle more than once and didn’t look great during the climb. He did finish inside of the main group (he was the penultimate rider of the group to cross the line) so let’s hope nothing is wrong with him.
Tomorrow should be one for the sprinters, again with Caleb Ewan and Mark Cavendish leading the pack in terms of favoritism. The long climb of the Portella Mandrazzi is located inside the first half of the stage so it shouldn’t seriously affect the sprinters’ teams’ work to bring everyone together to the line. The average slope of 4% is also not steep enough to put a dent in the peloton.
The only way I see this climb being useful is if two or more teams significantly increase the pace and commit to keeping it high for the rest of the stage. Which is a herculean task in itself since there will be 100km left to go at the peak of the Portella Mandrazzi. But if Lotto and Groupama (for Ewan and Demare), for example, commit to leaving sprinters like Cavendish behind, they can certainly do it. They must work together after the climb, though, otherwise it will be too easy to bring everyone back together.