Briton Simon Yates showed great strength on today’s stage 17 of the Giro d’Italia, profiting from yesterday’s rest day to launch a damaging attack four kilometres from the summit finish, distancing all of his general classification rivals, and catapulting himself back up the standings into third position.
After missing the day’s breakaway, Team BikeExchange sent Chris Juul-Jensen, Cameron Meyer and Michael Hepburn to the head of the peloton to work to reduce the distance, and setup Yates ahead of a tough final nine-kilometre ascent.
The gap to the breakaway was constantly reducing with Callum Scotson, Mikel Nieve and Tanel Kangert then taking over the workload on the penultimate climb of the day however, an untimely crash took down two Team BikeExchange riders, hindering the chase and allowing the gap to the escapees to increase back out once again.
Ahead, Dan Martin went in solo pursuit of the stage victory while the group with the GC contenders exploded, with riders spread out across the climb and both Hugh Carthy and Aleksandr Vlasov losing time.
At the four kilometre to go mark, Yates accelerated from the reduced GC group and quickly the Maglia Rosa began to suffer. Yates continued to increase the gap, crossing the line in third place on the stage, 53 seconds ahead of Bernal, moving back up to third position on the general classification.
Simon Yates – 3rd place overall
“I attacked and I didn’t realise Egan was dropped until a bit later, I was already going full so it wasn’t like then I could accelerate any more to try and increase the gap.
We missed the breakaway and I wanted to have a go for the stage today, by the time the breakaway had gone there was only 60km or so before the first climb of the day, it wasn’t a huge job for us, it wasn’t like we had to ride 200km on the front and burn all the team. They did a great job, so chapeaux to them and now we will see what I can do the next days.
I hope the weather stays like this, everyday it has rained I have not had a good day, so hopefully the weather stays the same and I can see what I can do in these final days.”
Matt White – Head Sport Director
“It was a very important day and we took some very valuable time from our rivals. Simon did very good ride, he felt very good coming out of the rest day and when people feel good, it is always a good time to test others.
Obviously, we would have liked to win the stage, Dan Martin had a great ride, but our other plan today was to take time on our rivals, and we did that with a lot of success today.
“After the crazy first 60km to 70km settled, Simon said he felt good and then the guys did an incredible job controlling the vast majority of the stage. The race is not over until it’s over. We have a very long day tomorrow then we go into two very challenging mountain stages on Friday and Saturday before Milan.”
2021 Giro d’Italia stage 17 results:
- Dan Martin 4:5438
- Joan Almeida +0:13
- Simon Yates (Team BikeExchange) +0:30
General Classification after stage 17:
- Egan Bernal 71:32:05
- Damiano Caruso +2:21
- Simon Yates (Team BikeExchange) +3:23
