The 101st Giro d’Italia is back on Italian soil with an exciting tryptic of stages in beautifully scenic Sicily. Today’s tricky, undulating stage had a sting in its tail – a final roller-coaster 5km on twisty roads with the last 800m rising steeply to the line. It was a stage for a puncheur won in spectacular fashion by Tim Wellens (Lotto Fix All) who attacked on the climb and surged again with 200m to go, dragging Rusty Woods (EF Drapac) and Enrico Battaglin (LottoNL-Jumbo) in his wake. While the race leader Rohan Dennis (BMC) retained the maglia rosa, there were splits in the leading group resulting in changes to GC.
Rider of the Race
Predictably I’ve gone with the race winner. Tim Wellens was crucially well-placed in the peloton and avoided being held up by the crash with just under 7km remaining, which splintered the peloton and ultimately lead to that shake-up in the general order.
Wellens was most people’s pick for today’s stage. Post-race he acknowledged he was perfectly set up for victory by his teammates, particularly the evergreen Adam Hansen and Tosh Van Der Sande:
I was lucky enough to have very strong teammates. So I started with a bit of an advantage at the beginning of the climb. I didn’t have to go full-on from the bottom; I could wait for the last 200 metres. I’m very happy with winning as early as on stage 4 so the rest of the Giro will just be a bonus, whatever comes next. I’ll ride stress free now.
Indeed! Today’s victory allows Wellens to leapfrog up the GC, he’s now in 4th place overall and feeling tranquillo.
Tweet of the Day
No one, but no one, does Grand Tour decorations as well as the Italians.
GC favourites roundup
As mentioned above, a wee shake up in the GC favourites occasioned by inopportune mechanicals and crashes:-
2 Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) +1 sec
3 Simon Yates (Mitchelton Scott) +17 secs ⇑
7 Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain Merida) +28secs
8 Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) +34secs
10 Carlos Betancur (Movistar) +35secs
12 Davide Formolo (BORA-hansgrohe) +37secs
14 Esteban Chaves (Mitchelton Scott) +47secs
18 Michael Woods (EF Drapac) +53secs⇑
20 Chris Froome (Sky) +55secs⇓
24 Fabio Aru (UAE-Emirates) +57secs
30 Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) +1:14⇓
31 Louis Meintjes (Dimension Data)+1:15⇓
Stage results
1 Tim Wellens (Lotto Fix All) 5:17:34
2 Rusty Woods (EF Drapac) same time
3 Enrico Battaglin (LottoNL-Jumbo) s/t
4 Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) s/t
5 Davide Formolo (Bora-hansgrohe) s/t
GC Top 5
1 Rohan Dennis (BMC) 14:23:08
2 Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) +0:01
3 Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) +0:17
4 Tim Wellens (Lotto Fix All)+0:19
5 Pello Bilbao (Astana) +0:25
All the jerseys
Embed from Getty ImagesLeader’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: © RCS