The 109th Giro d’Italia finally got down to some big mountain action on Friday, with a Cat. 1 summit finish on Blockhaus, where Jonas Vingegaard earned his first Giro stage victory in his first Italian Grand Tour. Afonso Eulálio kept the pink jersey. Although Nickolas Zukowsky was the most prominent Canadian on Friday, Derek Gee-West was top Canuck at eighth, a performance that vaulted him up to 13th on GC.
Preliminaries
Even with the heavy Friday conclusion, it was unlikely that someone could knock Afonso Eulálio out of pink, as he had nearly 3:00 over second place Igor Arrieta. Vingegaard, Giulio Pellizzari, Felix Gall, Giulio Ciccone and 2022 champion Jai Hindley were over six minutes back, but it was time for them to clash. Only three teams had scored victories so far.
The Course
Friday was an Apennines mountains marathon of 244 km with 13.6-km, 8.4-percent Blockhaus the first summit finish of the 109th edition. The Red Bull Kilometre was early on Blockhaus. There was a little rain again on Friday.
Canada’s Nickolas Zukowsky got in the day’s breakaway quintet along with mountains classification leader Diego Sevilla, hoping to take maximum points on the Cat. 2 Roccaraso. With 100 km to go, the gap back to the peloton was 4:45.
Sevilla bounded away from his breakmates to nab the points on Roccaraso 5:25 ahead of the peloton. Seventy-seven kilometers remained. Rain complicated things along the plateau. Visma-Lease a Bike’s efforts began to chip away at the gap.
Blockhaus
By the time they started Blockhaus, the fugitives consisted of Zukowsky, Sevilla and Jardi Christiaan van der Lee, 3:00 clear. Zukowsky dropped the others and snagged the dough and the seconds at the Red Bull Kilometre, but van der Lee came back to him. Red Bull took over the pace making in the pink jersey group, riding into a headwind.
Then it was Zukowsky’s turn to get dropped. Behind, Visma’s return to the front of the peloton whittled down the numbers to 20 before the breakaway was absorbed. Gee-West trickled off the back. Eulálio cracked with 5.8 km to go.
With 5.5 km remaining, Vingegaard attacked. The Dane had to get rid of Pellizzari.
Vingegaard shook Pellizzari loose with 4.4 km to climb, the Italian chasing with Gall. Then Pellizzari lost the…
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