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After a delay, a bus transfer and the inevitable, tiresome polemica that dominated RAI’s television coverage for much of the afternoon, the first Alpine stage of the Giro d’Italia eventually got underway from Le Châble at the foot of the Croix de Coeur. The abridged route promised intensity, but that still couldn’t break the stalemate between maglia rosa Geraint Thomas and Primož Roglič atop the overall standings.
“It was tough, but it didn’t really fully kick off, really,” Thomas said in Crans Montana after he finished alongside Roglič in a sizeable pink jersey group that only splintered within sight of the line. “Our boys controlled the race really well.”
The Gran San Bernardo was removed from the route after the riders of the Giro expressed concerns over the conditions on the descent, a decision that saw the stage reduced to just 74.5km in length, with the gruppo sent up the category 1 Croix de Coeur from the very start.
That configuration conjured up memories of the shortened stage to Sestriere on the 1996 Tour de France, when the race turned on its head in the space of 46 frantic kilometres amid Bjarne Riis’ repeated attacks. That was, however, more than a quarter of a century ago, and cycling’s mood music has changed a little since, at least in some respects.
The steep early ramps of the Croix de Coeur still made for a breathless opening here, mind, with Thomas’ Ineos guard quickly reduced to just two riders, Laurens De Plus and Thymen Arensman. Roglič, meanwhile, still had four Jumbo-Visma teammates for company at that point, and it briefly looked as if the Giro might be about to break open.
The Dutch squad, however, appeared happy to allow Ineos to police the race to the top of the climb and over the other side, by which point Pavel Sivakov had managed to scramble his way back up to the front. Sivakov proceeded to set the tempo in the pink jersey group for much of the final haul to Crans Montana, where Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost) was the only GC man to try to trouble the status quo.
Thomas and Roglič would finish 9th and 10th on the stage, 1:35 behind the day’s winner Einer Rubio (Movistar). In the overall standings, the Welshman remains two seconds ahead of Roglič, with João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) third at 22 seconds. Thomas suggested afterwards that, like at Gran Sasso d’Italia a week ago, a headwind on the final climb had discouraged aggression.
“There was a bit of headwind for a lot of the…
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