Yates wins first Giro stage in style
Having gifted the stage win to his team-mate Esteban Chaves on Etna three days earlier, when he first rode into pink, Simon Yates was in no mood for charity yesterday.
The 25-year-old continued his extraordinary Giro d‘italia by claiming his first ever stage win in Italy’s grand tour – and he did it in some style.
The frantic pace on the climb saw a number of big names dropped including Team Sky’s Chris Froome, who ended up conceding more than a minute to the Maglia Rosa. Froome’s deficit now stands at 2min 27sec.
“For sure it is not perfect,” said Team Sky’s sporting director, Nicolas Portal.
As for Yates, his was the performance of a rider not only in brilliant form, but one riding with confidence.
Mitchelton-scott had done the bulk of the work controlling the gap to the day’s breakaway, before Astana took over on the Calascio, the first of the two climbs that dominated the final 45km of the stage.
The last survivor from the break, Fausto Masnada (Androni-sidermec), was caught with 2.8km remaining, which was when the attacks really started to fire.
First Fabio Aru (UAE Team Emirates) was gapped as Giulio Ciccone (Bardiani CSF) hit the front, while Yates’s team-mate Jack Haig kept the pace high. Thibaut Pinot (FD) and Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) both had digs, before Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain-merida) went for the line with 500m left.
Yates, though, kept his powder dry, waiting on the Italian’s wheel, before finally coming around him to lead the stage for the first time all day. “I realise how big it is to win my first stage with the Maglia Rosa,” he told Eurosport afterwards.
Yates now leads the general classification by 32 seconds over Chaves, with Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) 38 seconds down in third place.