Tuesday kicked off the final week of the 2026 Giro d’Italia with a brief mountains stage where Vingagaard continued to stamp his authority on the race, winning his fourth stage, his first while wearing pink. Derek Gee-West gave a stellar performance to place fifth on the day and jump up to sixth on GC.
Preliminaries
Vingegaard didn’t have to go on the offensive, all he had to do is defend, but perhaps he couldn’t help himself. White jersey Afonso Eulálio wanted to keep his second place, but both Felix Gall and Thymen Arenman had designs on it. Gee-West still had Australians and a resurgent Giulio Pellizzari above him, and he had to be wary of Davide Piganzoli 32 seconds behind.
1) Jonas Vingegaard (Denmark/Visma-Lease a Bike) 59:12:56
2) Afonso Eulálio (Portugal/Bahrain-Victorious) +2:26
3) Felix Gall (Austria/Decathlon-CMA-CGM) +2:50
4) Thymen Arensman (The Netherlands/Netcompany-Ineos) +3:03
9) Derek Gee West (Canada/Lidl-Trek) +5:41
The Course
At 113 km, Tuesday was the shortest road stage of the 109th version, but it distinguished itself by finishing in Switzerland. Riders would climb Cat. 3 Torre and Cat. 2 Leontica twice, the ascents lumped close together. The Swiss summit finish at Carì was 11.6 km of 8 percent.
The first breakaway failed, but on the first of the “quadruplets”, Cat. 3 Torre I, another one skipped clear, Giulio Ciccone first to tip over to jump above breakmate Jardi Christiaan van der Lee into second in the mountains classification. Van der Lee was keeping Vingegaard’s blue jersey warm. Ciccone also grabbed maximum KOM points on Leontica I.
Torre II continued to fragment the breakaway, Ciccone shuffling off with Jhonatan Narvaez, Chris Harper, Einer Rubio and Diego Ulissi. Ciccone kept moving closer to Vingegaard at the top of the mountains classification on Torre II and Leontica II. With 40 km to go, Ciccone’s group had a 2:00 lead.
An uphill drag led to the Red Bull Kilometre just before foot of the Carì climb. Here, Narvaez dropped away from the fugitives and the writing seemed to be on the wall as to their capture. Pellizzari’s Red Bull team pulled the peloton onto the first slopes, but the man himself went out the back and would lose many GC spots.
The final escapee was finally sopped up. Eulálio and eighth place Ben…
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