A long and circuitous 204km parcours would take the Giro d’Italia over a choppy route, starting and finishing in the town of Cesenatico. However, the weather was far from beautiful, with wet weather lashing the peloton from the start and showing no sign of stopping during the day. While the climbs were far from difficult, the relentless ascending and descending – 3,800m of climbing to be exact – through the day was going to make for a hard day.
Clearly undeterred by the conditions, a sizeable break of thirteen went away early on, with another bridging across shortly after, and the peloton was more than happy to let them go. The lead exceeded thirteen minutes, but with such a sizeable advantage, the peloton upped the pace at the stage’s halfway point to reduce this a little. With 70km left, more bad weather came in from the Adriatic, making the going even more miserable.
Five riders were left scattered on the road ahead of the peloton. While the gap was being reduced, it wasn’t enough to stop the solo escapee on the front taking the win, and the remnants of the break taking the remaining top five places. From here the GC riders – now a small select group stretched along the road – were headed towards the finish, their only thoughts now of crossing the line safely to escape the rain and wind. No changes in the overall standings.
Ecuadorianof Ineos Grenadiers won after a long solo escape in Cesenatico, home of Marco Pantani.
Results
01 J.Narváez 5h31’24”
02 M.Padun + 1:08
03 S.Clarke + 6:50
From the Finish Line
“It was a long and hard stage, very wet and cold at times. Today, we didn’t take any initiative under these difficult conditions because the chances of losing time rather than gaining were higher. It was extremely important to stay warm and safe and try to respond to any movements, if they took place. The break won the stage and we’re happy that both Rafał and I finished again together, in the select group of favourites.” – Patrick Konrad
“We knew it was going to be a hard stage but the harsh weather made it much harder. If a big breakaway group formed we wanted to have a rider in and we succeeded with Cesare. The rest of the squad worked to protect our two GC riders, Patrick and Rafał, as much as possible. We didn’t have a specific plan, we waited to see how it would unfold. The heavy rain, the strong winds, up to 35km/h in the mountains, and low temperatures, down to 9ºC in some moments, made for a very tough day but everybody did a good job. Patrick and Rafał were always in the GC group, there weren’t any changes in the standings and everybody crossed the finish line within the time limit and without having suffered any incident. There are some difficult stages ahead, so we’re happy we went through this one safely.” – Jan Valach, Sports Director
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION
1 – João Almeida (Deceuninck – Quick-Step)
2 – Wilco Kelderman (Team Sunweb) at 34”
3 – Pello Bilbao (Bahrain – McLaren) at 43”
