Wednesday was the midway point of the 109th Giro d’Italia, and the peloton celebrated by contentedly letting the breakaway succeed. Enric Mas and Jhonatan Narváez fought it out for the day’s flowers, Narváez completing a hat trick of stage wins, UAE-Emirates’ fourth. Afonso Eulálio stayed safe in pink. Canadians Nick Zukowsky and Derek Gee-West finished in the favourites group.
Preliminaries
Jonas Vingegaard’s Tuesday time trial didn’t exactly light the world on fire, but it did position him 27 seconds from Eulálio’s pink jersey. By coming second to chrono winner and teammate Filippo Ganna, Thymen Arensman jumped over Felix Gall into a podium position. Gee-West’s fine performance bounced him into eighth with three Aussies—Jai Hindley, Ben O’Connor and Michael Storer—in positions five through seven. Giulio Pellizzari sat two seconds back of the Canadian.
The Course
Wednesday’s eleventh stage had four medium climbs in the second half of 195 km from the Porcari Paper District in Tuscany to Liguria. The day’s Red Bull Kilometer was on the peak of the final, uncategorized one. It seemed like a day for a breakaway to succeed.
The route and the fact that we’re now in the second half of the race meant for a large breakaway, one that grew over time and included two-stage victor Narvaez and 16th place Christian Scaroni. Seventeen chaps hit the foot of Cat. 3 Passo del Termine with a 2:00 buffer. Mattia Bais took the maximum KOM points.
Cat. 2 Colle di Guaitarola was up next, the breakaway snapping in half as attacks flared. Mas, on one of his bummer Grand Tours, was really fiesty on Wednesday. Again, Bais nabbed the KOM points, but it was still a big ask to reach blue jersey Vingegaard’s 111 points. At this point, fugitives Scaroni and Chris Harper were virtually ahead of Gee-West on GC.
On the descent of Colle di Guaitarola, Cat. 3 Colla dei Scioli on the horizon, the breakaway was down to 10 riders, and the reduced pink jersey group was 3:20 in arrears. Netcompany-Ineos continued to pace the peloton. A crash took down Scaroni and two others. On Scioli, escapee Diego Ulissi, who has eight Giro stages on his palmares, started the surges. Harper collected the full mountains points leading five…
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