An “emotional” Simon Yates tightened his grip on the maglia rosa ahead of the Giro d’Italia’s final rest day, taking his third stage victory of the race in stunning fashion yesterday courtesy of a bold solo attack 18km from the finish in Sappada.
Yates ended up winning by a significant margin - 41 seconds - to move 2min11scs ahead of his nearest rival, Sunweb’s Tom Dumoulin, who was third over the line.
The Bury-born rider’s buffer is roughly what he is expected to lose to Dumoulin, the world champion, in tomorrow’s [Tues] 35km time trial in Trento. Crucially, however, Yates will then have three big mountain stages on Thursday, Friday and Saturday in which to secure his first grand tour victory.
As the 25 year-old is clearly climbing better than anyone else in this race, for the first time since we started in Israel over two weeks ago Yates can now be said to be the clear favourite for victory.
It was a chastening day for Yates’s compatriot Chris Froome, however. Team Sky’s leader had seemingly roared back into maglia rosa contention with his win on the infamous Monte Zoncolan on Saturday.
But Froome paid for that effort yesterday, unable to stay with Astana’s Miguel Angel Lopez’s when the Colombian accelerated on the climb to Costalissoio, 18km from home.
Froome, who had risen to fifth on GC after Zoncolan, was left exposed, without team mates, and Yates took full advantage. A first attack was nullified by a high-quality group including Dumoulin, Lopez, Thibaut Pinot [Groupama-FDJ], Domenico Pozzovivo [Bahrain-Merida] and Richard Carapaz [Movistar].
But they were powerless to respond to Yates’s second attack and he had managed to open up an 18-second lead by the top of the climb, with 15km remaining to the finish.
As the rain started to fall, poor cooperation from the chasers allowed Yates to increase his lead with an increasingly exasperated Dumoulin gesticulating at his fellow riders to help him.
Their unwillingness to do so meant Dumoulin had to take sole responsibility for the chase, which in turn meant he was unable to respond to a counter-attack by Pinot, Lopez, and Pozzovivo.
Eventually the group came back together but not before Yates had extended his advantage to 41secs, finishing arms aloft, completely on his own.
“It was really hard from the bottom of the climb,” Yates said afterwards. “I still felt good so I chose my moment to go. They responded the first time but then I tried again and I gave it everything to get away. It's fantastic.
“I don't know why but I'm a bit emotional after today. I gave it everything.”
The question now will be how much time Yates loses in tomorrow’s time trial and whether he can then hang on to his form in the final few days of the race. All eyes will be on his performance relative to Dumoulin’s in Trento, with the Dutchman expected to claw back two minutes or more.
Even if Yates loses the maglia rosa, though, he will not panic. He has been the best climber in this race by some distance and has finished top 10 at both the Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana, so he knows what it is like to go deep into a grand tour, albeit never with the race leader’s jersey on his shoulders. “It's a good gap to Tom [Dumoulin] but he could take two minutes out of me in the TT,” he reflected. “I've been fighting since [the start in] Israel to have a good gap, and I have that now, but it could vanish in 35km. We'll see.”