Nairo Quintana won back the pink jersey from Tom Dumoulin, beating the Dutch rider by more than a minute in the Dolomites to ensure they carried their rivalry into the final two stages of the Giro d’Italia. Nearly 10 minutes up the road Mikel Landa, Team Sky’s Spanish climber, stormed away from his fellow breakaway riders on the final ascent to win an absorbing 191km stage at Piancavallo.
Quintana, the 2014 Giro winner, leads the overall standings by 38 seconds but with an individual time trial to come on the final day, which strongly favours Dumoulin’s talents, the Colombian will almost certainly need to increase his advantage in Saturday’s penultimate stage. Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali, the Giro winner in 2013 and 2016, remains third, 43sec from the lead, with the French rider Thibaut Pinot a further 10sec behind.
An early breakaway was allowed to go nearly 10 minutes clear by the main contenders. A series of attacks by Luis León Sánchez and Rui Costa splintered the lead group as they began the long climb to the finish but it was Landa’s drive 10km from home which proved decisive.
The Team Sky rider had come close to stage wins on two occasions already on this tour, including Thursday’s stage 18 when Tejay van Garderen beat Landa in a dash to the line. This time Landa left nothing to chance, chipping out a lead over Costa to claim the stage by 1 minute and 49 seconds from Costa, with French rider Pierre Rolland third.
With the end of a long tour in sight, frustrations boiled over in the pack in the closing stages when Trek-Segafredo’s Eugenio Alafaci was cut up by Rory Sutherland. Enraged, Alafaci threw his bidon at the Movistar rider’s back. Sutherland immediately turned around and apologised but Alafaci could yet face punishment for the incident.
Behind them raged the battle for the pink jersey, stoked by Dumoulin’s criticism on Thursday of his rivals’ tactics and Nibali’s response that the leader was getting “cocky”. On the final descent Movistar increased the pace, catching Dumoulin off guard, and when he tried to keep pace as the road steepened again he began to slide away from the main group.
Dumoulin had only one Sunweb team-mate, Simon Geschke, to tow, and when Geschke blew out with 5km to go Dumoulin appeared in danger of losing major time. He managed to remain in relative contact and although Quintana took the lead, the advantage remains with Dumoulin. The question now facing the 28-year-old is whether he can keep in touch on Sunday’s mountain stage following another exhausting day in the saddle.
“I made a rookie mistake in the beginning to sit at the back of the bunch when we went into the downhill,” Dumoulin said after the race. “With my bad legs [after Thursday’s tough stage] I needed to work hard to come back and that was unnecessary. I tried to limit my losses and I did that really well. Luckily my team were really strong today, they really saved me, otherwise it would have been a really bad day.”
