The Vuelta’s Italian flirtation shifted gears today, from regal sprinter fare to mountain grit— and as scripted, it was Jonas Vingegaard showing that grit, very narrowly nosing out Giulio Ciccone on the finishing 9.9-km climb into Limone Piemonte. With the stage win, Vingegaard donned the leader’s Red Jersey.
After 157 (or officially 159.6) flat-ish kilometers from Alba that lulled the sprinters into complacency, the race ignited. Four riders—Gal Glivar, Jakub Otruba, Liam Slock, and Sinuhé Fernández—lit off early in a break that hovered about two minutes up the road. A mid-stage sprint at Busca shook things up, the rain started drizzling, and then chaos: Guillaume Martin crashed hard on a descent, and in the trailing carnage, Vingegaard, Pidcock and others went down too. Martin abandoned; Vingegaard quickly recovered and, shepherded by now-trusted domestique Victor Campaerts, even found the presence of mind to blow a kiss to the TV camera as he rode back to the peloton.
As the wet roads gave way to dry, the break was swallowed up on the climb, and the favourites started lining up, with Sepp Kuss (now resolutely back in his supporting role). Lidl-Trek’s Giulio Ciccone led into the final steep meters, and Pidcock made a go, but Vingegaard burrowed in behind Ciccone and edged in the final few meters. David Gaudu, on virtually no one’s pre-Vuelta favorites list, claimed third, and Egan Bernal quietly slipped into fourth.
Philipsen—stage one’s red-jersey hero—was nowhere near contention and faded into the pack, but retains the green points jersey. Meanwhile, Vingegaard not only snatched stage glory but flipped the leader board: red to Jonas, green still to Jasper.
Results (from ProcyclingStats.com)
eTrashMike’s Analysis: Grand Tour fans love to draw conclusions from early-race finishing climbs: the Vuelta’s thousands of remaining mountainous kilometers notwithstanding, we believe that a finish like today’s grind offers glimpses of potential. Indeed, virtually all of the prognosticators’ GC picks finished within a couple of seconds of Vingegaard, with a few surprises sneaking in: the aforementioned Gaudu, as well as American rider Matthew Riccitello and Italian Marco Frigo, both riding for Israel Premier Tech. But some pundits’ long-shot picks are already off the pace: Antonio Tiberi, Javier Romo and Bruno Armirail all now need to recover 20+ seconds to remain in the GC conversation.
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