Vingegaard's first strike at Blockhaus reveals some early Giro d'Italia truths

After travelling inland from the start of stage 7 in Formia on the Tyrrhenian Coast, the Giro d’Italia gruppo began to hit truly rugged terrain around Castel di Sangro, one of the gateways to the wild and haunting branch of the Apennines that dominates the interior of Abruzzo. 

A sign on the outskirts boasts that the town is both resiliente e sostenibile, and those would be the keywords, too, when the race reached the Blockhaus 90km or so later. 

Who would be resilient enough to withstand Jonas Vingegaard’s expected onslaught, and would any rider emerge as a sustainable candidate to challenge him for overall victory? The Blockhaus would reveal the truth after a week of waiting. 

Giulio Pellizzarri’s assured win at the Tour of the Alps last month had marked him out as Vingegaard’s most likely sparring partner on this Giro, and his impressive response to the Dane’s probing attack on stage 2 in Bulgaria only underscored the idea.

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s management seemed to underline their belief in Pellizzari by having his teammates briefly take up the pace-making at the foot of the Blockhaus, and the Italian maintained a watching brief when Visma Lease a Bike took over the reins shortly afterwards.

Vingegaard’s attack, as inevitable as the waft of arrosticini in these parts, came with 5.5km to go. Pellizzari was immediately on his wheel, and his firm resistance to Vingegaard’s initial acceleration suggested that this Giro might prove to be a duel after all. Ten years on from Vincenzo Nibali’s second overall victory, maybe Italy had a bona fide contender again.

The illusion scarcely lasted a kilometre. Pellizzari looked smooth in responding to Vingegaard’s turn of pace, but the effort eventually began to tell. There is a fine line between being ever alert and over-eager; Pellizzari crossed it with 4.4km remaining, losing his grasp of Vingegaard’s rear wheel.

From there, Pellizzari’s afternoon turned into an exercise in damage limitation. After being caught and passed by an impressive Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM), he fell back into the company of his Red Bull teammate Jai Hindley and Ben O’Connor (Jayco-AlUla), eventually losing just over a minute to Vingegaard.

Pellizzari’s mental resilience is not in question, but the sustainability of his Giro challenge looks a touch more dubious after this display. At the very least, it was a harsh lesson, much like the one absorbed by O’Connor two years ago, when he was the only rider who (briefly) dared to track Tadej Pogacar’s offensive at Oropa, an effort that ultimately proved costly in his hunt for a podium finish. 

“I was feeling good and I’m sorry that I threw everything away by following him,” Pellizzari admitted when a microphone was thrust in front of him at the summit. 

Not quite, given that Pellizzari (fifth overall at 4:28) remains in contention for the podium. But those seeking a truly viable challenger to Vingegaard’s likely hegemony may have to look elsewhere.

Enter Felix Gall. Pellizzari wasn’t the only rider to follow Vingegaard’s initial acceleration, but his travelling companion read the lie of the land considerably better than he did. While Pellizzari, blinded by his hopes of challenging Vingegaard for pink, eventually lost his bearings, Gall always remained clear-eyed. 

The Austrian quickly understood that he couldn’t quite match the sharpness of Vingegaard’s effort, and he cut his cloth accordingly, dropping back and following his own pace as the climb snaked its way through the forestry in the closing 5km.

Gall went steadily – very steadily – the last time he was in these parts, coughing up over 26 minutes on his Giro debut in 2022, but his career has been picking up speed ever since. This season alone, his diesel engine carried him to fifth at the UAE Tour and sixth at the Volta a Catalunya.

Here, Gall’s strength and shrewdness almost brought him back in contact with Vingegaard on the very upper reaches of the climb. He would stalk the Dane all the way to the summit, coming home just 13 seconds behind him.

In the overall standings, Gall is now the only pre-race podium contender still within a minute of Vingegaard, lying just 17 seconds behind him. That immediately raised the question of whether Gall, fifth overall at last year’s Tour de France, could seriously think about winning this Giro.

Gall, self-deprecating to a fault, immediately shrugged off the idea after he had spilled across the line, pointing to his likely time losses in next Tuesday’s time trial along the Tuscan coast to Massa. “I’m not thinking about how to beat him for now,” he insisted.

Vingegaard, not surprisingly, took an opposing view. “I’m not surprised he was close in the end, he has shown he can push a lot of watts,” Vingegaard said when he took a seat in the press conference truck. “He’s a super strong guy and he has shown that again.”

While Gall’s prospects remain a matter of some debate, more clearcut verdicts were delivered about some other putative challengers. Egan Bernal lost almost three minutes and all hope of final victory, while his Netcompany-Ineos stablemate Thymen Arensman fared marginally better, finishing with Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek) and limiting the damage to 1:44. 

Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious) remains in the pink jersey, but there was little surprise when he shipped almost three minutes after his midweek exploits. His chances of being in the mix for the podium are quickly receding, and he is unlikely to fend off Vingegaard (now second overall at 3:17) beyond the stage 10 time trial.

Elsewhere, Hindley and O’Connor demonstrated their podium credentials by coming home with Pellizzari, and the Australian pair will surely take heart after subdued pre-Giro form. Like Gall, they had the smarts to pace the climb sagely – though not at the same exalted level as the Decathlon rider.

And the question of levels is a pertinent one. It remains to be seen, for instance, if Gall is really at a level to mount a sustainable challenge to Vingegaard, or if the Blockhaus will be as good as it gets for him at this Giro. Vingegaard’s almost unparalleled ability to stay the course over three weeks – hammered home by the dying days of last year’s Vuelta, where João Almeida was running him close – means that Gall’s chances of an upset here are still slim.

Elsewhere, Visma's Sepp Kuss and Davide Piganzoli again showed themselves to be at the kind of level required to shepherd Vingegaard to the places he needs to go when the road climbs on this Giro.

But above all, it still remains to be seen quite how close Vingegaard is to the level he needs to beat – or at least challenge – Tadej Pogacar at the Tour de France in July. Vingegaard ultimately fended off everybody, Gall included, on the Blockhaus, but he knows Pogacar is the invisible, absent opponent he will never be able to shake off across these three weeks in Italy. 

On Friday evening, however, Vingegaard politely batted away the question and tried to shift the focus back to a Giro that still has to be won. “I’m in super good shape, but I think the Giro is long,” Vingegaard said. “Today was the first real GC battle, and obviously every battle is important.”