Jonas Vinegaard (Visma-Lease A Bike) seized control of Tirreno-Adriatico with a crushing victory on stage 5 to Valle Castellana. The Dane ripped clear of his rivals with a rasping attack midway up the stiff climb of San Giacomo. Although there were still some 29km remaining, the result never looked in doubt from the moment Vingegaard launched his effort.
Vingegaard had almost a minute in hand when he crested the summit five kilometres later, and he proceeded to win the stage by 1:12 from a chasing group led home by Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) and Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe). In the overall standings, Vingegaard is now 54 seconds clear of Ayuso, with Hindley third at 1:20.
The victory was Vingegaard’s fifth of the season after his dominance at O Gran Camiño last month, and his winning effort here was a striking show of force after he delivered a surprisingly subdued display in Monday’s opening time trial.
Vingegaard began the day 22 seconds down on Ayuso, and though Saturday’s summit finish at Monte Petrano presented an obvious chance to turn the general classification on its head, the two-time Tour de France champion made his intentions clear by setting his Visma-Lease A Bike team to work through the stage.
“To be honest, we always had the plan to give it a shot today, and we did so. The team rode amazingly, and I’m really happy to take the win and pay the guys back,” said Vingegaard, whose teammates Attila Valter and Ben Tulett whittled down the peloton on the San Giacomo.
“We planned that we wanted to go full gas on the climb. The plan was that Attila had to do a really hard pace from the bottom, and then Ben had to take over and speed up. The plan went perfectly today.”
Nobody had the wherewithal to follow when Vingegaard zoomed clear, though first Ben O’Connor (Decathlon-AG2R) and then Hindley had attempted to limit the damage. There was nothing to be done. Vingegaard would amass an unassailable lead on the four kilometres of the climb that remained, cresting the summit with a lead just shy of a minute on the chasers.
On the upper reaches of the climb, Ayuso and his UAE Team Emirates companion Isaac del Toro joined O’Connor, Hindley, Ivan Sosa (Movistar) and Thymen Arensman (Ineos) in a chasing group that was policed by Vingegaard’s teammate Cian Uijtdebroeks.
Out in front, however, Vingegaard never relented. In a reprise of his displays at O Gran Camiño, he looked equally at ease on the descent off San Giacomo, and there was never any real prospect of the chasers marshalling a pursuit coherent enough to claw him back.
Vingegaard still had 53 seconds in hand on his pursuers by the time the road began to climb again in the final 8km, and he might light work of the shallow, unclassified ascent towards the finish to stretch out his advantage still further.
How it unfolded
The rugged stage through Abruzzo seemed to lend itself to a breakaway, and the strength in depth of the early escape suggested that it might go the distance.
Alessandro De Marchi (Jayco Alula), Niccolò Bonifazio (Corratec-Vini Fantini), Andrea Vendrame (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Clement Davy (Groupama-FDJ), Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers), Simon Clarke (Israel-Premier Tech), Ivan García Cortina (Movistar), Damien Howson (Q36.5), Kasper Asgreen (Soudal-QuickStep) and Magnus Cort Nielsen (Uno-X Mobility) combined smoothly to build an early advantage, but Visma-Lease A Bike’s presence at the head of the peloton was a signal of what was to follow.
Dylan van Baarle and Steven Kruijswijk’s efforts ensured that the break’s lead never extended beyond two minutes, and their pace on the climb of Castellalto also saw a number of fast men jettisoned out the rear of the bunch.
The break’s lead was less than a minute on the approach to the key climb of San Giacomo, where Vendrame and Cort tried gamely to hold off their pursuers on the lower slopes. By then, Valter had taken up the reins in the bunch, and his tempo had seen riders of the calibre of Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) and Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-QuickStep) relent.
The group of favourites had already begun to splinter by the time Tulett came through to ratchet up the pace still further. Vingegaard saw little reason to wait much longer.
None of his expected direct Tour rivals are at Tirreno, but it was hard to shake the sense that this latest feat of strength was a response of sorts to Tadej Pogacar’s 81km solo effort at Strade Bianche last weekend. Like Pogacar on Saturday, Vingegaard was in a race entirely of his own here.
It was an ominous display, and he will have a further opportunity to run through his repertoire at Monte Petrano on Saturday.
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