Already enjoying a solid general classification lead at this Giro d'Italia, Jonas Vingegaard soared to another stage victory and added to his overall advantage on Tuesday's stage 16, which started and finished in Switzerland.
Vingegaard soloed clear on the Cat. 1 summit finish and pressed on alone to the line in Carì to secure his fourth stage win of this year's race, arriving 1:09 ahead of Felix Gall (Decathlon-CMA CGM) with Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) a further two seconds back in third. Gall moved into second overall with Thymen Arensman (Netcompany-Ineos) now third overall after one-time Giro leader Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious) lost three minutes on the stage and dropped from second to fifth in the GC standings.
[race_result id=13 stage_id=89981 count=5 gc=0 year=2026]
[race_result id=13 stage_id=89981 count=5 gc=5 year=2026]
How it happened
- Stage 16 got underway beneath sunny skies on a hot day in Bellinzona in the Swiss canton of Ticino, and there was plenty of action from the start as riders fought to get into the break. After attacks and counterattacks, a substantial group formed and built a small gap – but the peloton was not content to let them go, driving a hard pace in pursuit over the ensuing 20 km.
- The group was caught on the day's first categorized climb, setting up another surge from breakaway hopefuls. This group, which included Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), took a small advantage over the climb, where they were joined by other attackers, including the UAE Team Emirates-XRG duo of Jhonatan Narváez and Jan Christen.
- This selection soon hit the Cat. 2 Leontica climb where pressure at the front of the group dropped more than half of the group, leaving Ciccone, Narváez, Chris Harper (Pinarello-Q36.5), Diego Ulissi (XDS-Astana), and Einer Rubio (Movistar) clear. A strange incident unfolded with a little more than a kilometer to go in the climb as Ciccone took a bottle from a soigneur and then immediately threw it away in frustration.
- Ciccone found some breathing room on his rivals at the top of the climb and started the descent alone but the five regrouped for the next climb.
- Unfortunately for the quintet of escapees, Visma was not in a giving mood, setting a hard pace in the bunch to keep the gap hovering around two minutes or less. The group of five shrank to four on the penultimate climb as Ulissi lost touch, and the gap was down to a minute and a half when other teams came to the front to join Visma in the pace-setting.
- With Decathlon contributing to the chase, the break started to fall apart on the approach to the final climb. Harper was the last survivor out front when the race hit the Cat. 1 slopes, while Red Bull took over in the bunch.
- Red Bull's efforts quickly dropped none other than Red Bull's own Giulio Pellizzari, leaving Jai Hindley as the lone GC rider for the team in the group. Visma then took back over, catching Harper.
Did we do a good job with this story?
