After Friday’s GC shake-up, there was a lot less Giro d’Italia general classification action on Saturday’s stage 8, as the favourites ceded the stage win to the breakaway.
Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) won the hilly stage to Fermo, and there was minimal GC action behind as Visma-Lease a Bike controlled the pace.
Race leader Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious) tried and failed to gain a few seconds with an attack on the final climb, with the only time gaps coming in the final sprint to the line – Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) grabbed two seconds on the rest of the GC group with their sprints.
Overall, Eulálio continues to lead, 3:15 over Vingegaard and still 3:34 over Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) in third. There was one major mover who took advantage of the chase of the all-day breakaway group with Narváez, Christian Scaroni (XDS Astana) gained enough time to climb up seven spots to fourth.
The riders in spots five to eight, therefore, all shifted down a spot but remain the same in terms of relative time to each other. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammates Jai Hindley and Giulio Pellizzari are in fifth and sixth, Ben O’Connor (Jayco AlUla) is in seventh, and Mathys Rondel (Tudor Pro Cycling) is in eighth.
Thymen Arensman (Netcompany Ineos) had an uneventful day to hold onto ninth overall, and Michael Storer (Tudor Pro Cycling) remains in 10th.
There was one rider dropping out of the top 10, former pink jersey Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) who lost four minutes in the stage 8 finale to drop from eighth to 28th overall. Lidl-Trek official GC rider Derek Gee-West finished in the favourites group, but is 6:10 down in 14th.
Just outside the top 10, Mikel Beloki (EF Education-EasyPost) also profited from being in the break, climbing up to 11th.
Vingegaard took a big bite in Eulálio’s lead on stage 7 with his solo win atop Blockhaus, but with the six minutes that Eulálio gained on stage 5 to go into the lead, the pre-race favourite has some work to do to wrest the pink jersey away from the Portuguese rider who is not going down without a fight.
The racing continues on Sunday with stage 9, a 184km day from Cervia to a summit finish at Corno alle Scale which could see another GC shake-up before the first rest day on Monday.
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Giro d’Italia current GC standings
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