Over the wall: How Magnier turned the tide in Giro points battle

Like the contest for the maglia ciclamino itself, stage 18 of the Giro d’Italia could have gone either way. Although there was the full quota of 50 points on offer for the day’s winner, there was no guarantee the fast men would prevail in Pieve di Soligo.

It’s always a big ask for the sprinters’ teams to control a stage this deep into a Grand Tour, and the presence of the sharp climb of Muro di Ca’ del Poggio in the finale complicated their task still further. 

If anything, the ascent looked like an open invitation for the all-action Jhonatan Narváez to add to his haul of stage wins at this Giro and perhaps put the points classification all but beyond the reach of Paul Magnier.

Narváez was an accidental contender for the maglia ciclamino by dint of his three stage victories in the opening half of the race, but he has been very deliberate about chasing the prize ever since Magnier was burnt off on Bric Berton on stage 12 and denied the chance to sprint for a big haul of points in Novi Ligure.

From that point on, Narváez began picking off points that were beyond Magnier’s reach. He moved into the maglia ciclamino for the first time at Pila after collecting a dozen points during his stint in the day’s early break. And although Narváez immediately handed the jersey back to Magnier 24 hours later, he did so by a much smaller margin than anticipated after the four-man break upset the sprinters in Milan. 

That left the contest perfectly balanced coming into the third week, where the stage was set for an asymmetric kind of battle between two riders destined to score their points in very different places. The mountainous terrain lent itself to Narváez’s enterprising style, but Magnier held the trump card of the final stage in Rome, where 50 points would be on offer for the first rider across the line.

When making his calculations, Narváez has been treating Magnier as though he were a football team with a game in hand. “I have to be 50 points ahead of the sprinters to win, because the last day is a good day for them,” the Ecuadorian said earlier this week.

Narváez began the last leg of his campaign on a strong footing, snaffling another 12 points as part of the break on the road to Carì on stage 16 and he moved back into the maglia ciclamino when he infiltrated the break once more the following day and collected another 14 points.

That gave Narváez a lead of 12 points over Magnier ahead of stage 18, which now promised to be the defining day of their duel. The race organisation had deemed the profile to be gentle enough to warrant a full 50 points for the stage winner, rather than the 25 or 15 reserved for more rugged days – but the climb in the finale meant it might still prove beyond the range of Magnier and the sprinters.

Magnier was smart enough to pick and choose his battles here. There was still a point up for grabs behind the four-man break at the uphill intermediate sprint in Guia, but the Frenchman understood there was no point in wasting energy there. Narváez clipped away uncontested to claim the point, while Magnier braced himself for impact with the Muro di Ca’ di Poggio.

This day last week, Magnier was surprisingly among the first riders dropped on the admittedly longer Bric Berton, but he was much more assured here. He wasn’t quite as adventurous as Jonathan Milan, who parked himself in the front row as the climb began, but he remained well positioned as the gradient began to point.

Magnier was inevitably left behind when maglia rosa Jonas Vingegaard put in a tentative acceleration over the top, but he had some welcome company in the second group on the road. Narváez, who was eating up terrain like this earlier in the Giro, was also unable to follow. 

In hindsight, the signs were already there on stage 17, where Narváez’s bluntness in the finale suggested that he was finally beginning to pay a toll for his aggression and élan across the opening two weeks of the Giro.

As Magnier crested the summit of the Muro di Ca’ del Poggio with just under 10km to go, he knew he had, at worst, secured a stalemate against his direct opponent. But as the race came back together on the run-in, he realised he had an unexpected chance to deliver something close to a knockout blow.

Before the stage began, Magnier hadn’t really considered the prospect that he might scoop up the maximum 50 points here, given that his past experience on Muro di Ca’ del Poggio had been a negative one. “Last year I did this climb on stage 15, I think, and I was completely dropped,” Magnier smiled afterwards.

He explained that the day’s objective for Soudal Quick-Step had been to deny Narváez a shot at the full haul of points by engineering a scenario whereby the early break went the distance. That didn’t materialise either, but Magnier managed – just about – to hang on to the second group over the top of the climb.

“I was maybe the last guy to be able to go over that climb but I had a lot of teammates with me,” he said. 

One of those teammates, Jasper Stuyven, again provided a pitch-perfect lead-out for Magnier in the final kilometre, but the Frenchman didn’t win on positioning alone here. His turn of speed was a striking one as he immediately opened a winning gap over Edoardo Zambanini (Bahrain Victorious) and Milan. 

Together with his dramatic fightback for third place in Naples, this was arguably Magnier’s most impressive sprint of the entire Giro, and it came at a pivotal time. He is back in the maglia ciclamino with 195 points to Narváez’s 158. 

“I was really not confident this morning when I saw UAE were controlling stage,” he said. “But now with the victory, I can be more confident.”

Magnier still has to survive two arduous days in the mountains, of course. But with a 37-point lead over Narváez, he might not even need the insurance policy of another sprint in Rome on Sunday.