Valgren explains surprise attack that netted first Grand Tour stage win - 'My max peak power is ridiculously embarrassing'

The rolling early terrain produced an unwieldy initial break of 29 riders, and that was whittled down to six contenders on the rugged finale. Valgren showed his strength by attacking with Einer Rubio (Movistar) on the final classified climb, and he showed his nous when the front group swelled to six again with just under 2km to go.

Rather than wait for a sprint, Valgren surprisingly opted to attack just before the flamme rouge. It proved a sage choice as he came home just ahead of Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X Mobility) and Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious). In his flash interview afterwards, Valgren explained why he wasn’t willing to gamble on a sprint finish.

“It’s a funny thing – people think I’m fast but I’m actually quite slow,” Valgren said. “My max peak power is ridiculously embarrassing, to be honest, so this is my move. And when I have good legs, I’m pretty good at it.”

Valgren had already showcased his form on Italian roads this year with an emotional win from the break in Mombaroccio at Tirreno-Adriatico. That was his first victory in almost five years, after injury had ravaged his career, and he arrived at the Giro seeking to break his Grand Tour duck.

“I missed this on my resume,” Valgren said. “I think I deserved this. My career has been pretty good, but I needed this Grand Tour stage win and luckily it came today, in Italy. Apparently, I race really well in Italy… It’s where I have most of my victories and I’m really happy to be here.”

The large break of the day featured dangermen including Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), but Valgren managed to get on the right side of the splits once the move started to break up. That in turn led to problems with his feeding, but he smiled that he had just enough in the tank to take the honours.

“Yeah, it was a strange day,” he said. “It was such a big group and we never worked together. I was getting kind of pissed to be honest. I was like. why don’t we just try and race? Then we for sure raced hard in the end, it was super hard and I was really on my limit. I didn’t have any food for a while because the cars were really far behind us. I was really worried, and I thought I was going to bonk but luckily, it was not 500 metres longer…”

On crossing the line, Valgren pulled a green disc from his pocket and held it up, and he later explained that it had been a good luck charm that his son had made for him.

“Last year, I had high hopes for a good stage at the Tour, and my son is into Pokémon, so basically it’s a Pokémon in our team’s colours,” he said. “It’s a lucky charm.”