Vingegaard emerges from chaos to lay down first Giro marker

While the Tour de France’s recent Grands Départs in the Basque Country and Italy generated high-octane racing, the Giro d’Italia’s foreign excursions have tended to be more sedate affairs. If we didn’t know better, we’d almost think the peloton was collectively operating on a work-to-rule basis in protest at the lengthy transfers involved.

That trend continued for almost 200km of stage 2 to Veliko Tarnovo, where the gruppo ambled along behind the day’s early break, but a bike race eventually broke out in the finale, with Jonas Vingegaard and Giulio Pellizzari enjoying their first head-to-head contest of the Giro.

Before that skirmish, however, the Giro was again blighted by a mass crash, though unlike the incident in the finale of stage 1, this was caused by the conditions rather than the course. 

Slippery roads and rising speeds are always a lethal combination, and when Marc Soler skidded 23km from the finish, it created a chain reaction that saw 30 or so riders come down. 

Amid the carnage, the commissaires sagely took the decision to neutralise the stage for a little over two miles, though that stoppage didn’t prevent Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) from losing 13 minutes and all hope of emulating his brother Simon’s overall victory at this race.

The pace had already been ratcheting upwards before the mass crash and, despite the confusion caused by the pause, the peloton had no compunction about resuming hostilities as soon as the commissaires restarted the action. 

Egan Bernal duly snatched six bonus seconds at the Red Bull sprint, but although the Colombian and Ineos teammate Thymen Arensman were the only GC men to make a tangible gain on the stage, the action on the following climb to Lyaskovets Monastery was probably a firmer indication of the direction of travel of this Giro.

If, as Daniel Benson pointed out, Vingegaard and Visma | Lease a Bike had channelled Marco Pantani and Mercatone Uno by sitting en masse at the rear of the bunch for long phases on stage 1, they were back in a more familiar, proactive posture on day two.

With another slippery descent to come before the finish, Vingegaard perhaps reasoned that attack was his best defence against the vagaries of the bike race. After a fine cameo from Davide Piganzoli had shredded the front group, Vingegaard threw himself onto the offensive with a striking double acceleration.

Although Vingegaard’s main aim here was surely to get ahead of any further crashes in the finale, his attack also doubled as the first test of credentials on this Giro. Vingegaard is, by a distance, the man to beat, and this acceleration allowed him to gauge who, if anyone, might seriously try to do so.

Pellizzari, so impressive in winning the Tour of Alps last month, was present and correct, zipping across to Vingegaard’s wheel in the company of Lennart Van Eetvelt (Lotto Intermarché).

That trio quickly built a lead of 20 or so seconds over the chasers, and given their advantage and their strength, they probably should have contested the stage victory in Veliko Tarnovo. 

But Van Eetvelt’s understandable reticence to collaborate too much with the Giro favourite and his most likely challenger contributed to a stand-off in the final kilometre, and they were swept up before the finish. 

The spoils instead fell to Guillermo Thomas Silva (XDS-Astana), who showed that the land of Enzo Francescoli and Diego Forlán can also produce bike riders, as he claimed Uruguay’s first-ever victory on a Grand Tour. 

It means that Vingegaard doesn’t emulate his absent rival Tadej Pogacar by moving into the pink jersey on day two of the Giro, but he and his Visma team will surely be glad to have XDS-Astana take some responsibility for controlling the peloton in the days ahead.

Above all, Vingegaard’s cameo on stage 2 was a confirmation that his sharpness remains intact following six weeks without racing since the Volta a Catalunya, while he will also be relieved to have emerged unscathed from the first unexpected obstacle that has cascaded into his path on this Giro. 

Pellizzari, meanwhile, was reluctant to read too much into his matching of Vingegaard on the final ascent, reasoning that the real climbing tests of this Giro will be significantly longer than this hillock overlooking the Yantra river, starting with the Blockhaus next Friday.

The riders distanced on the climb, like Bernal and Arensman, will cling to that thought too, and it would be unwise to extrapolate too much from this explosive finale, beyond the obvious – Vingegaard is clearly ready.