'We were always in control' – No ambushes for Vingegaard as Giro hits muri

The hills of the Marche have a special place in Italian literature, immortalised by the poet Giacomo Leopardi, who pondered the vagaries of existence as he gazed upon the horizon from his lonesome perch above Recanati.

In cycling, these hills along the Adriatic coast mean something else altogether, and there’s rarely time to sit around and dwell on the infinite. The steep muri in the hinterland of Fermo are notorious from their appearances at Tirreno-Adriatico over the years, and they made for a tense finale to stage 8 of the Giro d’Italia, with the general classification men braced for the worst on the run-in.

Giulio Pellizzari, a native of nearby Camerino, was concerned enough about Saturday’s stage to perform a nocturnal recon after a stage of this year’s Tirreno-Adriatico. “We came here to try it during Tirreno with the bike at 9 at night,” Pellizzari told reporters in Fermo on Saturday. “It was beautiful, but we also knew it was hard, and we defended ourselves.”

Defensive postures were the order of the day among the GC contenders, despite an explosive finale that offered several springboards for willing attackers. The bonus seconds at the Red Bull sprint were hoovered up by winner Jhonatan Narváez and the break of the day, and although Jonas Vingegaard’s Visma Lease a Bike team took up the reins on the stiff climb to Capodarco, there was no sense of an imminent offensive. Unlike the Giro’s breathless visit to nearby Osimo in 2018, there would be no open showdown among the podium contenders here. 

When it eventually arrived, the first attack in the GC group was from a surprising source, with maglia rosa Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious) opting to try his luck with an acceleration on the final haul into the medieval heart of Fermo. But the Portuguese rider confirmed afterwards that his was a defensive manoeuvre, as he simply wished to build a bit of momentum ahead of the steep final kilometre.

“I had checked the final, and I stayed a little on the back to read the race,” Eulálio said in the mixed zone. “Then in the last k, I did this move to gain speed before the cobbles. It was just that riding on the front was easier.”

The only separation in the group of favourites would come in the very closing metres, when Pellizzari’s Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammate Jai Hindley accelerated within sight of the line, drawing Vingegaard with him. The pair gained a couple of seconds on their rivals, but it was a minor detail in a stage whose profile promised rather more frissons among the podium contenders. 

Past the finish line, a cluster of Italian television reporters closed tightly around Pellizzari, but they couldn’t wring even a drop of internecine polemica from the home favourite, who insisted that Hindley was fully within his rights to try his luck in the final reckoning. Hindley, incidentally, knew the roads well as a winner of the GP Capodarco in these parts a decade ago.

“We’re both leaders and he was feeling good, so he rightly made a nice sprint,” Pellizzari said, immediately quenching any talk of internal discord.

Although Eulálio remains in the pink jersey, Vingegaard is the fulcrum around which this Giro rotates. The pre-race favourite lies second overall, 3:15 down on Eulálio, though he downplayed the idea that he was the de facto leader of the Giro.

“I don’t know if I rode like I’m the leader of the Giro,” Vingegaard said after his Visma squad had set the tempo on the climb to Capodarco. “We just raced the way we wanted to race, and we wanted to stay safe. Today it wasn’t up to us to make the difference. There are still many days to come.”

Vingegaard was equally relaxed about the significance of the two seconds he had snaffled away from all his GC rivals bar Hindley in the closing metres. “It’s always nice to gain two seconds; it’s better than losing two seconds,” he said. 

In truth, the tension of the day had come with some brief splits in the early part of the stage before the break formed, but the muri did not produce the anticipated fireworks, at least among the overall contenders. The terrain was ripe for an ambush from Vingegaard’s rivals, but it never materialised.

“At one point there was a gap in the peloton, and I was sitting a little too far back,” Vingegaard said. “My teammates had to fix it, but fortunately, I have a strong team. And we showed on the steep climbs how strong a team I have. We were always in control.”

Vingegaard and Visma will expect to maintain that control on the road to Corno alle Scale on stage 9, where the category 1 climb to the finish presents the Dane with another clear chance to impose himself on this Giro.