'The show's over' - Pellizzari cracks and loses 18 minutes at Giro

When RAI television sought a comment from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe sports director Christian Pömer after stage 16 of the Giro d’Italia, he reached for a line from Pagliacci before switching to his native German. “È finita la commedia,” he winced. In this case, the show’s over.

Giulio Pellizzari arrived as the great Italian hope for this Giro after winning the Tour of the Alps last month. Although illness at the end of the opening week essentially any prospect of vying with Jonas Vingegaard for the pink jersey, a spirited showing at Pila on stage 14 restored belief that he might challenge for the podium.

That illusion ended within the opening kilometre of the final climb to Carì on Tuesday. Red Bull were setting the pace on the front of the pink jersey group when word filtered through that their co-leader Pellizzari had surprisingly been dropped.

Unlike at Pila, Pellizzari wasn’t simply feeling his way into the climb. There was no fighting the inevitable here, and he would concede more than 18 minutes by the summit. In the overall standings, Pellizzari plummets from sixth to 19th. 

“It was flat out from the first kilometre of the climb. It was too far from the finish, and I sat up,” Pellizzari told reporters when he crossed the finish line. “Let’s hope I can recover in the coming days. Jai Hindley is still fighting for the podium, and we’ll try to help him.”

Pellizzari lost time at Corno alle Scale on stage 9 after suffering with stomach problems, and the issue had continued to affect him in the second week, but he downplayed the idea that illness had been a factor here.

“I don’t know, I just tried to hang on,” said Pellizzari, who was succinct when asked about his chances of salvaging a stage win from the mountain stages still to come. “With these legs, no,” he said.

Pellizzari’s teammate Hindley fared rather better on the climb, finishing with his podium rivals in the chasing group that came in a little over a minute down on the unassailable Vingegaard. Hindley now lies fourth overall, five minutes behind Vingegaard but just 33 seconds off the third step of the podium.

Before the stage began, however, Red Bull had designs on trying to keep both Pellizzari and Hindley in contention for the podium. 

“We hoped that in the last week we could try something with both captains, maybe get them both on the podium or even dream big and put one of them in a position to attack Vingegaard,” Pömer told RAI. “Our plan today was to gain time on our direct rivals Felix Gall and Thymen Arensmann, so we wanted to lead on the final climb. We did that, but at one point Giulio said he wasn’t feeling well. There was a brief discussion, and Giulio himself said, ‘Keep going, ride for Jai.’”

Pellizzari’s battling display at Pila suggested he had turned a corner in this Giro and suggested he could better his sixth place finish of a year ago and compete for the white jersey of best young rider. Instead, his travails on the short but demanding stage on Swiss roads appear to have caught even his Red Bull squad by surprise.

“We were very optimistic after stage 14 because he was able to keep his problems under control there,” Pömer said. “We were also optimistic that he would be back at full strength after the rest day, and we were a bit surprised that wasn’t the case today. Now we just have to live with the consequences.”