Finally some action! After two weeks of shivering in the rain, the favorites came to light in the 16e stage of the Tour of Italy, won on Tuesday at the top of Monte Bondone by João Almeida, ahead of Geraint Thomas, who finds the leader’s pink jersey.
The Portuguese and the Briton are the big winners of this first great mountain odyssey – five climbs, 5200 meters of elevation gain – which allows us to see much more clearly in a Giro long blurred by bad weather.
Almeida won, at 24, the best victory of his career and climbed to the second provisional step of the podium after showing an attacking temperament that we did not know him.
Thomas displays a dazzling form two days before his 37e anniversary and now has an 18-second lead over its Portuguese rival in the general classification.
Barring a failure or a new twist, the two men should fight for the final victory on Sunday in Rome along with the other big favorite, Primož Roglič.
Third in the stage and overall, 29 seconds behind Thomas, the Slovenian showed signs of weakness on Tuesday on the endless and sharp slopes of Monte Bondone, where he was unable to follow the acceleration first of Almeida , then Thomas, despite the help of his teammate Sepp Kuss.
But he limited the breakage, cutting the line 25 seconds behind the duo, giving him the opportunity to stay in ambush while several terrible stages are still on the programme.
Behind, the hole is made. The fourth, the Italian Damiano Caruso, already points to almost three minutes in the general. And potential candidates for the podium lost big on Tuesday, like Frenchman Thibaut Pinot, who was dropped 9 km from the finish and finished 3 min 26 s behind the winner.
His teammate at Groupama-FDJ Bruno Armirail, sublimated by the pink jersey, had yielded only a few hectometres earlier, after clinging to the tails of the best for a long time. In the end, he conceded more than four minutes to logically lose his leader’s jersey, which he wore with pride for two stages.
Armorial of Courage
“I spent three extraordinary days, this jersey will perhaps change a small part of my career,” said Armirail, the model teammate who usually fights in the gruppettos and who, this time, was still in the front row. , to courage, when the big fight broke out.
And, for once, it was João Almeida who ignited the powder, after a lot of work by the Jumbo and UAE teams to come back to the morning breakaway, led in particular by the French brothers Paret-Peintre, both very prominent since the start of this Giro.
Put into orbit by his teammate Jay Vine, the Portuguese attacked six kilometers from the summit, soon joined by Geraint Thomas, the only one to keep up with his pace, but he ended up grilling on the line.
“I felt good, so I took the risk to go. It’s a dream come true, I’ve been around it for four years and finally I’m getting there, ”said Almeida, who finally won, after four second places, on a stage of the Giro.
Pure general classification rider, the Portuguese (4e of the Giro in 2020 and 6e in 2021) seems to have decided to force its destiny. “If I have good legs, I will continue to attack”, warned the white jersey of the best young person.
But he will have to pass over the body of Geraint Thomas, winner of the Tour de France in 2018, who seems to age like good wine. “It would have been nice to win the stage, but I’m happy to be back in pink”, indicated the Welshman, who crosses this Giro with the phlegm of the old lion despite the rain and the blows of fate, and who recorded on Tuesday the loss of a new luxury teammate with the abandonment of Frenchman Pavel Sivakov, following those of Filippo Ganna and Tao Goeghegan Hart.