Let’s take a moment to appreciate how strong a rider must be to do what Mathias Vacek just did.
The run-in to the Giro d’Italia’s fifth stage was a lumpy, sinuous route into Matera, similar to the stage won by Arnaud Démare in 2020. It was one of the classic Giro stages, physically taxing and technical and difficult to control. Through all of this, the rider policing the front, controlling the tempo, dropping other sprinters, and finally pulling a last-kilometer leadout, was Lidl-Trek’s young Czech rider, Vacek.
Give a nod to Pedersen’s incredible three wins in five, of course. His win on Wednesday was gritty, desperate, and beautifully orchestrated. But Vacek’s ride was even more impressive.
The setup
Lidl-Trek sport director Maxime Monfort seemed as shocked as anybody that the plan he’d set out in the bus Wednesday morning actually worked. “Normally, what we plan in the meeting almost never works,” he told TNT or Max or HBO or whatever we’re supposed to call it now. “But this time, it worked perfectly.”
The plan was thus: The early kilometers would be handled by Jacopo Mosca, who is now extra light thanks to a recent Mads Pedersen-inflicted haircut. Vacek, who has been riding high this Giro and currently sits third overall, in the white jersey of the best young rider, was in charge of keeping an eye on Pedersen as they crested the cat 4 Montescaglioso with 30 km to go. This climb removed almost all other top sprinters.
As the reduced peloton reached the final major climb, a 5.6 km, relatively shallow affair, Vacek patrolled the front, looking relatively comfortable, as Pedersen pulled a classic drift-back maneuver, starting the climb near the front and finishing it in the final third. The team coalesced over the top and on the descent that followed and prepared for the hard run-in.
The Giro is always full of stages like this, the sort that have you questioning your fantasy picks down to the last kilometers, and then wondering how a rider who was 30 wheels back with less than 2 km remaining somehow crossed the line first.
The finale
Up until this point, all seems somewhat normal. A key domestique put his leader into position at two key points — check. Standard stuff. A pat on the back on the bus but little else.
Then we get to the last four kilometers.
The legs are tired by this point. You can see it in the way the peloton moves and strings out. Riders look around, looking for leaders but also looking for somebody else, anybody else, to take some wind. Vacek finds Pedersen and slots him into third wheel, behind Visma-Lease a Bike's Bart Lemmen. Perfect positioning as one major kicker remains.
The peloton hits the base of the final climb at 2.5 km to go. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe give it a little go, using their GC leader Primoz Roglič to apply some pressure. Vacek, still with Pedersen on his wheel, is unfazed. Pedersen, on the other hand, is already looking quite fazed.
Roglič pulls off and Vacek takes the lead. He ramps up the pace. His job here is clear: stay on the gas, keep things lined out, make sure nobody gets any funny ideas about shooting off the front. The last thing Lidl-Trek wants is a Richard Carapaz or Tom Pidock two-kilometer long bomb.
But there's a problem. Vacek is so strong he drops Pedersen. As the top of the climb nears, the Dane slips backward, slowly at first and then quite quickly. Is he pulling a drift like he did on the earlier Category 4? Perhaps. But his body language suggests he had no choice.
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