Giro d’Italia Stage 20: Vingegaard Seals GC with Crushing Stage Win

Jonas Vingegaard capped out his Giro d’Italia GC win in fine style on Saturday, shrugging off his rivals on the final climb of Piancavallo and stomping to a fifth stage win.

The Visma-Lease a Bike champ unleashed a seated acceleration with about 11km left, at first being held by Felix Gall but then distancing the Austrian almost immediately. He gobbled up the ground between himself and the remains of the day’s break, joining and leaving them with 10km remaining and then powering onwards to victory.

Vingegaard had started the day 4:03 ahead of closest rival Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) and further extended his advantage to 5.22 with his latest rampage.

Gall lead in Jai Hindley (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Derek Gee West (Lidl-Trek) 1:15 after the Maglia Rosa, with Thymen Arensman (Netcompany Ineos) a further four seconds behind.

Barring any crashes on Sunday, it means Vingegaard will take his fourth grand tour win and, crucially, victory in each of the sport’s three week races.

He will become just the eight male rider in history to achieve the treble, with the most recent being Chris Froome in 2018.

Vingegaard hopes his heroics in Italy will also set him up for a successful Tour de France campaign, just as it did for Tadej Pogačar two years ago.

Most dominant stage win yet

Reassuringly for Vinegaard, his form seems to be growing as the race continues. He took his first stage victory on Blockhaus on May 15 and was just 13 seconds ahead of Gall there. The margin between the duo two days later was a dozen seconds, but from there it stretched out.

A gap of 49 seconds over Gall at Pila grew to 1:09 at Carì, with Saturday’s triumph six seconds greater again.

Was he trying to exercise his dominance in attacking 11km from the finish rather than closer to the line?

“No,” he answered. “We had to improvise a bit. Sepp said he didn’t have his best day today, but Bart Lemmen was amazing. He did such a high pace from the bottom. The plan was to go later on the climb but we had to change the plans a bit and I had to go a bit earlier.”

He had previous indicated that one stage win in pink was a target for him but, as things turned out on Saturday, one wasn’t enough.

Being hungry for more is, he said, natural.

“Of course I am a cyclist, I like to win,” he said. “I want to win as many races as possible. We decided to go for it again today. Today was the last day, in the mountains at least. Today everything would be decided so we decided to go all in for the stage.

“The boys did amazing again today. I had an amazing day also and to now win five stages here and to have a solid lead going into tomorrow is special for me.”

One final mountain stage

The penultimate stage of this year’s Giro d’Italia was the final GC showdown of this year’s race, with Sunday’s leg to Rome very much one for the sprinters.

It was a stage with a straightforward opening 130km, interrupted only by a single category 3 climb, but then things got far more difficult with two ascents of the cat.1 Piancavallo climb.

This was 14.5km in length and averaged 7.8 percent but featured sections of over ten percent.

The day’s break formed inside the first hour with Jack Haig (Netcompany Ineos), Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X Mobility), Alex Huens (Groupama-FDJ United), Thomas Silva (XDS Astana Team) and Jonas Geens (Alpecin-Premier) being joined by Larry Warbasse (Tudor Pro Cycling) and Manuele Tarozzi (Bardiani CSF 7 Saber) with 131km remaining.

The gap soared to over five minutes, but was less than that when they started the Piancavallo climb with 67km remaining. Silva and Tarozzi were jettisoned 5km later, with Geens and Huens slipping back very soon afterwards.

Haig, Leknessund and Warbasse pressed onwards but had just 1:22 crossing the finish line with the final 52.6km lap yet to be done. Mountains leader Ciccone sealed his win in that competition when Huens collected the points for fourth, his closest challenger Jonas Vingegaard having indicated he wasn’t trying to battle him for it.

Geens was joined by Igor Arrieta (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Ludovico Crescioli (Team Polti VisitMalta) with 40km to go and these caught the leading trio 5km later. The sextet had 2:05 starting the final climb, 14.5km from the summit, but with Visma-Lease a Bike continuing to drive behind their chances were very uncertain.

Vingegaard hits the gas with Giro win in sight

A move by Warbasse with 13km remaining didn’t result in a lasting tap, with Crescioli having more success 1km later. He pushed hard towards the summit in a bid to fend off the Maglia Rosa group.

Vingegaard wasn’t in a giving mood, though, and with about 11km to go he put in a brutal seated attack which saw off all bar Gall. The latter cracked soon afterwards and Vingegaard powered across the gap to catch the reunited pair of Crescioli and Leknessund with 10km left.

He immediately went solo, stomping his way towards another stage win and finishing his GC campaign with a flourish.

Gall was caught by Derek Gee (Lidl-Trek) and Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) with 4.7km remaining. Egan Bernal (Ineos-Grenadiers) dragged his teammate Thymen Arensman up to them, but the those two were slightly distanced in the sprint to the line.

That left the GC with Vingegaard as the clear winner, 5:22 ahead of Gall and 6.25 in front of Hindley. Arensman is at 7:02 with Gee-West 7:56 off the pink jersey.

And Tadej Pogačar? He didn’t ride the race, but will undoubtedly be watching closely and anticipating a tight battle in France in July.