Oh, what a dull dull stage this was, riding through the desert, past building sites. But once again, Elia Viviani gave us a thrill at the end, this time having to fend off a very dodgy Sam Bennett sprint line that nearly put the Italian into the barriers. Rohan Dennis stayed safe in pink and the only change in the GC top 5 was Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Fix All) losing time and dropping out of the top 10 altogether.

Rider of the Race

While Elia Viviani was as impressive as ever, my Rider of the Race is Vivz’s teammate who got his man safely through the 450,000 roundabouts, the gigantic speedbumps and 100s of corners in the last 10km of the race and kept the speed so high that riders who couldn’t keep up pretty much were left to their own devices, somewhere in the desert. That teammate is, of course, Zdenek Stybar. He rode most of the peloton off the lead bunch by working hard with Max Schachmann to keep the speed super high and was the first to go under the flamme rouge on the run-in to the finish. It was then up to Viviani to use his speed and track skills to take his second consecutive stage win in Giro101.

 

 

Tweet of the Day

You gotta hand it to him … he’s consistent!

GC favourites roundup

And there is no change from yesterday in the GC favourites …

Simon Yates (Mitchelton Scott) +21secs

Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain Merida) +28secs

Carlos Betancur (Movistar) +29secs

Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) +34secs

Chris Froome (Sky) +38secs

Davide Formolo (BORA-hansgrohe) +41secs

Esteban Chaves (Mitchelton Scott) +47secs

Fabio Aru (UAE-Emirates) +51secs

Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) +57secs

Michael Woods (EF Drapac) +1:03

Louis Meintjes (Dimension Data)+1:09

Stage results

1 Elia Viviani (Quick-Step Floors) 5:02:09

2 Sacha Modolo (EF Drapac) same time

3 Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe) s/t

4 Jakub Mareczko (Willier Triestina) s/t

5 Danny Van Poppel (LottoNL-Jumbo) s/t

GC Top 5

1 Rohan Dennis (BMC) 9:05:30

2 Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) +0:01

3 Jose Goncalves (Katusha-Alpecin) +0:13

4 Alex Dowsett (Katusha-Alpecin)+0:17

5  Pello Bilbao (Astana) +0:19

All the jerseys

Embed from Getty Images

Leader’s jersey: Rohan Dennis (BMC)

Points jersey: Elia Viviani (Quick-Step Floors)

KOM jersey: Enrico Barbin (Bardiani CSF)

Best young rider: Max Schachmann (Quick-Step Floors)

For full review of the stage, go to Cycling News  

Header Image: © GETTY/Velo/Tim de Waele