Nico Denz claims first Grand Tour stage win, Geraint Thomas retains leaders’ pink jersey
Nico Denz won the 12th stage of the Giro d'Italia on Thursday for his first victory in a Grand Tour, while Geraint Thomas kept hold of the pink jersey as the race pre‐ pares to head into the mountains.
Denz, who rides for Bora‐Hans‐ grohe, beat Toms Skujiņš and Se‐ bastian Berwick at the end of the 185‐kilometer (115‐mile) hill leg from Bra to Rivoli in the Pied‐ mont region.
The first stage win for Denz in his sixth Giro prompted the Ger‐ man to yell in joy after crossing the line and put his hands on his head as his eyes appeared to tear up.
All three riders were in a large breakaway that had to battle to escape at the beginning of the day.
The trio pulled away from its fellow escapees and had an ad‐ vantage of more than eight min‐ utes on the general classification group on the toughest part of the stage, a second‐category climb 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the finish.
"The breakaway was definitely hard to get in, and then the hard‐ est moment for me was the last climb, I was suffering so much and I barely made it over the top," Denz said. "But getting there was also not so easy.
"When I made it over the last climb … I used the downhill to re‐ cover. And on the bottom, I started to think, 'yeah, I can make this actually.' And then they did‐ n't attack me, so I just threw everything in and yeah, from there on I thought, 'I can maybe do this.'"
The rest of the breakaway rolled across the line two minutes, 20 seconds behind, around six min‐ utes ahead of the GC contenders.
Thomas remained two seconds ahead of Primož Roglič and 22 ahead of João Almeida.
There was a minute of silence before the start on Thursday to honor those affected by the flood‐ ing in Emilia‐Romagna.
It was a quieter day in the pelo‐ ton after an eventful few days which saw pre‐race favorite Remco Evenepeol withdraw after testing positive for the coron‐ avirus and Tao Geoghegan Hart leave the race on a stretcher after a crash on Wednesday.
Geoghegan Hart had been third in the overall standings, five sec‐ onds behind his Ineos Grenadiers teammate Thomas.
"It definitely changes how we race," Thomas said. "When we had myself and him up there, that gave us two good options. Obvi‐ ously, he's not here anymore, so it's a massive blow to the team. And he was going really well.
"But we've still got a good, strong unit here and we've had great morale from the start here, and hopefully we can just con‐ tinue that."
The majority of the riders on Thursday would have been sav‐ ing their legs ahead of the mighty mountains.
Friday's 13th stage has three top‐category climbs on the 199‐ kilometer (124‐mile) route from Borgofranco d'Ivrea to the sum‐ mit finish at Crans‐Montana. It will be an exceptionally tough day even though the route has been altered and the race will not go over the top of the Passo del Gran San Bernardo because of snowfall and a risk of avalanches, but through a tunnel.
The stage will be expected to shake up the overall standings. And a good performance from Thomas could set him up to be‐ come the oldest Giro winner when the race ends in Roma on May 28, three days after the British cyclist turns 37.
Fiorenzo Magni was 34 when he won the Giro in 1955.
"We've still got five mountain top finishes to do, we haven't even raced up one yet," Thomas said. "So we're not counting our chickens, we're just taking every day as it comes and a big big day tomorrow."