That was hectic stuff, with plenty of action before an excellent sprint strategy from Quickstep in difficult, greasy conditions. Viviani, barring a major accident, has the maglia ciclamino in his grasp. Back to the mountains they go tomorrow, a long ride from Abbiategrasso to Prato Nevoso, which ends with a category one climb almost a mile high after what looks a flat stage. No rest in the Giro, so see you tomorrow.
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And here’s the General Classification, unchanged from this morning.
1 Simon Yates (66hrs 39:14)
2 Tom Dumoulin (+0:56)
3 Domenico Pozzovivo (+3:11)
4 Chris Froome (+3:50)
5 Thibaut Pinot (+4:19)
So, here’s the stage results
1. Elia Viviani, Quickstep
2. Sam Bennett, Bora-Hansgrobe
3. Niccolo Bonifazio, Bahrain–Merida
4. Danny van Poppel, LottoNL–Jumbo
5. Jens Debusschere, Omega Pharma-Lotto
And Viviani takes the stage!
Chaos reigned but Quickstep got him home. Sam Bennett got second, having had to come back from a distance out, and with bodies his way. Viviani takes his fourth stage, and surely the purple points jersey is his.
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Bennett way back. Viviani leads it out....
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Viviani has two team-mates for company. Bennett trying to get on his wheel.
Quickstep, Viviani’s team are pushing to the front. Sam Bennett is finding himself with some serious company. And here come the puddles....
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Swinging round some dangerous looking roundabouts, they are hurtling into the town centre.
Simon Yates covered up by his team in the main group. They pass the 3km free zone, so his place at the lead of GC is assured. That may come into force if that rain causes problems.
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Lammertink surely won’t last long but it’s a valiant effort, this one.
Under 5km to go now....
Brambilla sits up, Stybar takes up the pace, but the peloton draws near. And they have a flood at the finish line to deal with, by the looks of things. The peloton catches up but Dutchman Maurits Lammertink has catapulted himself to the front.
There’s a breakaway from Gianluca Brambilla with Robert Gesink giving chase. Zdeněk Štybar has joined in, but the gap to the main field is now closing.
TV pictures show heavy rain at the finish, but the riders are in the dry.
Into the final 10km we go, and an expectant crowd is being washed by summer rain that is probably cooling them, but holds plenty of fears on such a complicated final run-in.
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The speed of the peloton has produced gaps, with contenders being spat out. This is a breakneck pace now. Sanchez and De Marchi have given up the ghost at the front. And the breakaway is done.
This is a winding old road into Iseo, with some punishing hairpin bends, and with that sheen of rain adding grease, these are treacherous moments.
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Lotto NL, Bora, Quickstep and Michelton-Scott are the teams driving the pack. Rain now coming down, which adds peril to a sprint on the best of days.
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De Marchi and Sanchez trying to stay away, but the gap is down to 25 seconds.
Under 20km to go now....
Luis Leon Sanchez has made multiple attempts to get clear, but now must give up the ghost.
So, the field has already had one look at the finish line, which may help the sprint strategy of those chasing the stage win. Meanwhile, De Marchi is sat up in the breakaway group. Their fun looks to be over for the day. Soon it will be time to freewheel home. Poels has given up the ghost and slows down so his Sky team-mates can catch him up.
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One lap of Iseo to go now, as the tifosi gets more than look at the riders. There are 23km left.
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Yes, that leading group is now shedding seconds at a rate. Poels’ hopes of going up the GC look to have vanished.
The crowds are building up on the road to Lake Iseo, and the gap is dropping fast. It’s 48 seconds at the moment. It looks like a sprint finish is in order. Viviani v Bennett: It’s on.
And here they are:
@JohnBrewin_ John
— Robert Stringer (@RobertStringer) May 23, 2018
I’m on honeymoon in Italy & my delighted wife can’t believe her luck that I’ve brought her to the Giro at Lake Iseo!!
Any help from your readers how I can save my marriage so early would be appreciated!
Thanks for live updates
Rob Stringer
Cheltenham pic.twitter.com/VxqmiF0b2X
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Rob Stringer emails in: “John, I’m on honeymoon in Italy and my delighted wife can’t believe her luck that I’ve brought her to the Giro at Lake Iseo!! Any help from your readers how I can save my marriage so early would be appreciated!”
Many congratulations Mr and Mrs Stringer (should she have taken Rob’s name). Rob has sent a picture of the happy couple at the finish line. That reminds me: who was the football manager who took his new wife to a reserves game?
There is nothing calm about race day in this year’s Giro. It’s been helter skelter stuff from the first day. No time to sit up in the saddle.
There is a second chasing group forming ahead of the peloton, and at the back, the likes of Aru, Bennett and Van Poppel looked to be dropping but have had to chase back. Petrol used up for Bennett? Viviani has taken two points in an intermediate sprint in the meantime, as he increases his stranglehold on the purple jersey.
That leading Poels group is still 1’ 24” clear. There seems to be a discussion taking place between the breakers. Poels is rather too high on GC for those thinking of their team, though at ten minutes back he is not too much of a threat for the likes of Simon Yates. With the final circuit approaching, it’s time to think strategically.
Dumloulin also had to drop back to the team cars, but he’s calmly enough making his way back the main field. Dare we say that this is something of a lull? The leaders are 1’ 28” clear. That’s a decent gap but there is still 45km to go.
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My mistake below - Viviani is with Quickstep, Sam Bennett is with Bora. Talking of Viviani, he’s had a mechanical, and needed to drop back to get his bike fixed. A temporary panic, and Viviani returns to the field. Added to the confusion was that this all happened at a feed station.
Bora’s domestiques looking for others to do the work, and Mitchtelton-Scott are taking up the chase. Wout Poels is pushing on the breakaway which is up to 34 seconds.
The gap at the front is around 20 seconds, and the rain has gone, to be replaced by what looks like a significant temperature. Muggy, as the English say, though not in the Danny Dyer meaning of the word.
David Alderton emails: “This has been a most exciting race so far, and Yates has been superb. He has ridden with both style and panache, qualities needed in a GT rider above any other. Although I was sceptical of his ability to maintain the effort, he is making a great fist of it, especially with yesterday’s result. The competition seems to be fading away, and I now think he can really do this.”
I have to agree, and I think most of the field do. Perhaps most of all Sunweb and Sky. Let’s see in those mountains, though.
Some wild fantasising from a, er, “Malicious A” on the Twitter: “It is raining and being over 4 minutes adrift means that Pinot has a great opportunity to get a stomp on so we can experience the thrilling heroics of him riding himself back into contention before winning overall.”
That would be up there with Nibali in 2016.
This latest climb is uncategorised, but looks tough enough to me. The riders are snaking up through heavy crowds. Bora, the team of Viviani, are leading the main group, with that final sprint in mind.
That breakaway looks to comes to naught, and the peloton is back together. Just over 60km to go now...but away they go again. Poels, Sanchez, Hermans and De Marchi, the latter the attack specialist of this Giro. Rodolfo Torres has also gone with them.
Here’s an example of just how fast they go in the Grand Tours, some 2009 amateur footage from the Lago de Iseo, where they finish up today. That blur on the shore is the cyclists.
Rain absolutely hacking down now, and that’s potentially bad news. They are racing down to the flat section, at least, but they are racing at almost 60km an hour.
Tom Dumoulin is sat amidships of the peloton, with no team-mates around him, but looks comfortable enough.
Yates’ Mitchelton-Scott team are marking down the breakaway on this fast descent. Some unwelcome rain is also falling. That’s never welcome on the way down.
The descent from the big climb of the day has begun. The gap is 24 seconds to Yates’ main group.
Sanchez is amid an eight-man group, which includes Wout Poels and Kenny Elissonde of Team Sky. Has Froome decided he wants team-mates to just go out there any enjoy it, or is there another strategy at hand?
There are gaps appearing in the field. With a long descent to follow, the expectation is that all will come back together, but plenty of fuel has been used up by all those breaks and now this climb. Luis Leon Sanchez is having another dig at getting into a break. The rest of the field won’t thank him for that.
After all that chaos, now for a big climb. This is a category 3, up to Lodrino. The field is back together now, so this could be the launchpad for further attacks.
Thanks to Tim Young for his prompt answer to Richard’s question below: “Think that Juan José Cobo beat Froome into second place with win bonuses in the 2011 Vuelta.”
Yes, imagine if Froome hadn’t had to play super-domestique for Brad Wiggins. Cobo won by 13 seconds, though was playing a similar role to support Denis Menchov himself.
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Looks like Viviani didn’t add to his points lead over Bennett in the purple jersey chase. Viviani has 237 points to Bennett’s 197.
Viviani was the sprint winner from the main group, but if he got any points from that, it was only a single one.
An intermediate sprint awaits, but the current stage leaders, Marco Frapporti and Darwin Atapuma, will be taking the main points from Viviani and Bennett.
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Question to the floor from Richard Powell: “Is it still feasible that Yates wins with a slower overall time due to his bonuses? And has this ever happened on a Grand Tour before?”
Currently trying to recall if the 1989 Tour, that infamous eight seconds between LeMond and Laurent Fignon, included time bonuses. Any help appreciated, and other examples welcome.
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At the front of the field, France’s Quentin Jauregui, Italy’s Mattia Cattaneo and Krist Neilands of Latvia are our three-man leadership group. The jiggery pokery behind the group behind them and those chasing that down might give them leeway to get away for a while.
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Who else is in the second chasing group? Miguel Angel Lopez is pedalling like thunder alongside Froome. That’s bad news for the white jersey holder. Meanwhile, Froome seems to be having one good day followed by another bad day at the moment. Should he actually be allowed to ride this year’s Tour de France, that’s not a good sign.
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Andy McGrath, from the excellent Rouleur mag, emails in, to tell this tale.
You’ll like this, John. A bloke in New England called Simon Yates has been getting hundreds of Tweets of encouragement intended for the Giro leader due to his Twitter username. An extension of the Chris Hoy/Chris Foy confusion years ago.
Some official accounts have made this mistake.
#Giro A #Sappada tripletta di @SimonYates! Dà 41” a Dumoulin, crisi Froome e Aru @giroditalia https://t.co/opGL8BRr2c #ciclismo pic.twitter.com/pUQxNSC4FL
— LaGazzettadelloSport (@Gazzetta_it) May 20, 2018
And here’s the other Simon Yates.
twitter feed definitely blowing up! feel bad for everyone who has to read all the tweets about our conference last week #gartnerdmc instead of @simonyatess https://t.co/Ijez6UgeYZ
— Simon Yates (@SimonYates) May 21, 2018
Up the front, the peloton is catching up the breakaway. Just 12 seconds in it now. But it’s the gap between the chasers that’s intriguing. Yates and Dumoulin, in the leading group of chasers, have distanced a group containing Chris Froome and there’s 15 seconds in it. And this was supposed to be the quiet day.
Sam Bennett, in becoming the first ever Irishman to win a Giro stage in 31 years, is almost certainly the best sprinter since the legendary Sean Kelly, these days best known for being a voice on Eurosport. Kelly, who sounds like the most impassive man in show business, was pumping the air in delight at his compatriot’s success. And who won 31 years ago? Stephen Roche. Kelly was the superior one-day racer, perhaps the greatest of his era, but Roche had that amazing 1987.
Anyway, here’s Kelly on his old pal.
Back in the peloton, there is some early intrigue. Elia Viviani, holding the leading sprinters’ purple jersey, seemed to have fallen off the back but is now at the vanguard. Bora–Hansgrohe’s men were putting in work and looked to be trying to distance the Quickstep man to help out Sam Bennett, who has designs on that purple jersey. The breakaway group is now on the descent.
Ok, as expected, there has been a breakaway. The hilly section of today’s course is at the start and there’s a gap of 40 seconds to a sizeable group which includes no GC contenders. The biggest name in there is Spanish veteran Luis León Sánchez, who has been trying to get others to do work.
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Preamble
Afternoon, all. This Giro is Simon Yates’ to lose now. And it would be a hell of a surprise if he lost it today, a flattish ride through beauty spots, from the banks of Lake Garda to Lake Iseo in Lombardy.
After Tuesday’s time trial, the gaps is 56 seconds, by no means unbridgeable, but there are mountain stages to come this week in which it would be expected that Yates takes more time out of second-placed defending champ Tom Dumloulin, with Domenico Pozzovivo 3’ 11” back on the Dutchman. Chris Froome lurks on 3’ 50” behind, but last night appeared to be dismissive of his chances of repeating the amazing comeback that Vincenzo Nibali pulled off in 2016 when coming back from over four minutes down to steal the race in its final days.
Froome’s lack of form suggests he is not in the right shape for such a miracle, and not when Yates has looked almost invulnerable on the climbs. The leader was helped somewhat by a TT yesterday that was not as harsh as expected, with Dumoulin’s Sunweb team a little miffed at its relative ease.
So, this one looks a day for the sprinters, with Sam Bennett perhaps seeking a third stage win. The Irishman was dead last up the Zoncolan on Saturday, and rather took the Michael in pulling a series of wheelies up the final climb. His main rival is Elia Viviani, the Italian seeking his fourth stage win.
Before that crescendo, expect some cat and mouse stuff between Sunweb, Team Sky and Yates’ Mitchelton-Scott team, who are now expected to ride defensively. And, of course, with possible stage wins now at a premium, expect the breakaway specialists to have an early dig or two.
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