Overall race leader Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) stamped his dominance on the Giro d’Italia Friday with a convincing win in the first individual time trial. Pogačar mastered the 40.6 km ride from Foligno to Perugia, limiting his losses to pure time triallists on the flat section and then posting by far the fastest time in the uphill section between the T2 intermediate timing split and the finish.
Ineos Grenadiers’ TT specialist Filippo Ganna laid down the early marker for a fast time and then had an interminable wait in the hot seat, which ended only with Pogačar’s ride. Ineos overall had a mixed day: its riders placed 2nd through 4th, but GC hopeful Geraint Thomas lost 1:43 on the day with a 10th-placed finish.
Uphill onslaught
- Stage 7’s mostly flat-to-uphill parcours provided a test of pacing, and Pogačar’s answer was to ride easy in the first part to save power for the climb. He shipped 44 seconds to Ganna at the first time check at the race’s halfway point, but then turned up the power and had lost only three more seconds by the start of the climb, where he proceeded to lay down a blistering pace that pulled back more than a minute in just over five kilometers of riding.
- Thomas, on the other hand, seemed to struggle a bit throughout. In striking distance of Pogačar at the first time check, the gap between the two widened from eight seconds to 40 by the second intermediate spot, and then ripped open on the climb. He slipped one spot in the overall standings, to third, behind Bora-Hansgrohe’s Daniel Martinez, but even Martinez is already 2:36 down heading into stage 8’s uphill finish at Prati di Tivo.
- Cian Uijtedebroeks (Visma-Lease a Bike) struggled as well, losing 2:38 on the day; Jayco-AlUla’s Luke Plapp, who finished seventh, now leads the best young rider classification and is in fifth place overall.
- Windy conditions caused some havoc in the opening section, and painted pedestrian crossings also tripped up one or two. DSM Firmenich-PostNL’s Tobias Lund and Visma-Lease a Bike’s Tim van Dijke were two of the fallers, but all riders finished on the day.
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Brief analysis
- Whew. Last week, ahead of the race, I wrote that the speculation around Pogačar’s Giro had probably gone too far. That analysis has of course aged like a tub of yogurt left on a hot sidewalk. Through just seven of the 21 stages, Pogačar has now won two in dominant fashion. His closest challenger is 2:36 behind, and stage 8’s summit finish – a 14.7 km climb at 7% average to Prati di Tivo – suits his strengths perfectly. Anything can happen, of course, but even with questions about his UAE team, Pogačar himself looks all but unbeatable.
- It wasn’t entirely clear from his post-race comments, but Pogačar suggested that he has spent literally no time – even in training – on his TT bike. “Today was my first race on the TT bike” since last year’s World Championships, in August, he told Eurosport, noting that he used the first part of the course to simply get comfortable with the position again. Pogačar has been spotted warming down on his TT bike after a stage or two, but if he’s spent next to little time on the bike even in training that makes today’s ride all the more impressive.
- Last year’s Monte Lussari TT stage saw early speculation about time trial-to-road bike switches turn into a full F1-style pit zone. But the shorter climb today, which featured a steep opening kilometer followed by a much milder false-flat style 4 km to the finish, didn’t necessitate such moves. But Ineos Grenadiers did take a novel approach, as Ronan Mc Laughlin reports, employing rear disc wheels equipped with Classified’s planetary-gear Powershift hub to run a 1x drivetrain without the downsides a huge front ring would pose for the climb.
- Thomas was clearly not happy with his result, but a question – or rather statement – from a Eurosport interviewer that his teammates had done well but him not so much clearly annoyed the usually amiable Welshman. “That my teammates rode a good time trial? Yes, thanks,” he said tersely, and ended the interview.
Quote of the day
I knew that climb suits me better than Filippo for sure. So that was my advantage there on the climb because it was quite steep, but I think the next time trial will be a little bit different probably.
-Pogačar, managing expectations for the flat stage 14 time trial next week
Near miss of the week
The choice of Antonio Tiberi to headline the CPA’s recent rider-safety video was questionable, but the need for the message itself is certainly not, as this clip of a clueless fan smacking Ganna shows.
Up next
Saturday’s stage 8 is a classic mountain stage. The 152 km route from Spoleto to Prati di Tivo has just three officially categorized climbs, but the whole day is up and down. It starts with an uncategorized 7.3 km ascent at 4.1% average – the perfect launching pad for an early break – followed by a Cat 2, 16.4 km grinder at 5.6% and then more undulations before the Cat 1 finish at Prati di Tivo. There are over 3,600 meters of elevation gain on the route: a long day for the sprinters and others with a seat in the grupetto, and a day when climbers will have to be aggressive if they are to have any hope of chipping into Pogačar’s lead.
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