Safety first: Ineos hit the front but don't test Vingegaard at Giro

Chiavari is an evocative name in cycling history. It was here, on the shimmering Ligurian coast, that Italian national coach Alfredo Binda convened peace talks between Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali ahead of the 1949 Tour de France. 

The rivals had essentially marked one another out of the race at the previous year’s World Championships in Valkenberg, and Binda was keen to avoid another figuraccia. With his coaxing, Coppi and Bartali reached an agreement not to step on one another’s toes at the Tour. The Italian press quickly immortalised the accord as the Patto di Chiavari, and Coppi triumphed in Paris. 

Alliances are rarely quite so formalised in cycling, of course, but on-the-hoof agreements will always be commonplace in the peloton. When riders or teams find a common cause, they don’t need a notary or even a handshake. An exchange of glances will usually do. 

And so, when the break finally gained traction after a rapid start to stage 11 of the Giro d’Italia, the teams of the general classification contenders were happy to allow the move forge clear. There are more arduous battles to come on this Giro, and nobody, it seems, was eager to seek out an additional skirmish here. A truce of sorts was called, even if the rugged terrain in the finale meant that the expression was relative.

“Everybody wanted to have a bit of an easy day, if you can say that,” Jonas Vingegaard said when he reached the finish of stage 11 in Chiavari. “It took a long time before the breakaway went and from there, I think all the GC teams were quite happy.”

Vingegaard isn’t in the maglia rosa of the Giro just yet – he remains 27 seconds down on the spirited Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious) – but he is very clearly the padrone after he raced into an early lead on his GC rivals with stage wins atop the Blockhaus and Corno alle Scale in the opening week.

The Giro favourite’s performance in the stage 10 time trial to Massa, however, was a subdued one, even if Visma Lease a Bike sports director Marc Reef had a point when he suggested that the display had been unfairly judged against the misleading standard of his showing in the hilly Combloux time trial on the 2023 Tour de France.

Still, Vingegaard’s showing prompted Netcompany-Ineos director of racing Geraint Thomas to suggest that he was “off the boil” at this Giro, and he also wondered whether the Dane had been hampered by one of the various illnesses circulating in the peloton in recent days.

And so when Netcompany-Ineos massed at the head of the bunch on the category 2 Colle di Guaitarola, one wondered if they were seeking to test out their director of racing’s theory about Vingegaard’s current state of health.

There were still 60km of rippling terrain to come, including the climbs of Calla dei Scioli and Cogorno. In Giri past, this kind of profile has lent itself to unexpected ambushes and all-out attacks.

When Alberto Contador made his tilt at the Giro-Tour double back in 2015, for instance, Astana ripped the race apart when it hit the Ligurian coast between Chiavari and La Spezia. They were motivated partly by trying to win the Giro with Fabio Aru but also by tiring out Contador ahead of his encounter with Vincenzo Nibali in July.

They didn’t manage to break Contador that afternoon on the Passo del Termine, but they did end the podium hopes of men like Ryder Hesjedal after casting the race to the four winds amid the headlands and coves of Liguria.

Netcompany-Ineos, however, didn’t seem to race with quite the same intent here. Even though Egan Bernal himself was dispatched to set the tempo at the front, their aim appeared to be less about troubling Vingegaard and more about keeping tabs on the break and keeping their man Thymen Arensman out of trouble. 

Arensman was the big mover on GC during Tuesday’s time trial, leaping to third overall after he took second on the stage behind teammate Filippo Ganna. After a disappointing showing on the Blockhaus, the Dutchman is firmly back in podium contention, and he lies 1:30 down on Vingegaard.

Maintaining that position was Ineos’ motivation for policing the bunch in the finale here, and the GC men all reached Chiavari’s Corso Valparaiso together, 3:24 down on stage winner Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

“It was quite hot and the day after a time trial is always super complicated, but we were just happy to keep Thymen in a good position,” Bernal said when he wheeled to a halt beyond the finish line. 

The thought was echoed by Bernal’s teammate Jack Haig, who confirmed that their presence at the front was defensive rather than offensive. The idea was not to squander time needlessly rather than seek to gain it inventively.

“We know Thymen gets better and better as the race goes on in a Grand Tour, so it’s basically just about trying to minimise all the risks and just keep him safe,” Haig explained. “We have such a strong team here that it would seem a missed opportunity if something had happened just because we weren’t closer to the front.”

Haig shrugged off the idea that Ineos’ pace-making here might also have been intended as a test of the resilience of Vingegaard and others given the stories of illness circulating in the peloton.

“There’s been a few rumours going around, but it hasn’t affected us at all,” Haig said. “It hasn’t really been in our minds, and it wasn’t anything to be considered. It was mostly about just trying to keep everything safe today. We knew that the two downhills off those last two climbs were quite technical. The safe place to be was in the front.”

At least for now, Arensman and Ineos seem to be looking over their shoulders rather than at the man in front of them. Despite clawing back over a minute on Vingegaard on Tuesday, Arensman, like the rest of the GC men, doesn’t seem convinced that he’s racing for anything higher than second place. It wasn’t exactly a truce for Vingegaard and Visma on the road to Chiavari, but it was close enough.