Giro d'Italia: Chris Froome takes a third straight Grand Tour victory

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Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe) took victory on the final stage of the 2018 d’Italia, a circuit race around Rome. The Irishman claimed his third win of the race after jumping from Elia Viviani’s (Quick-Step Floors) wheel in closing metres. Viviani took second, while Jean-Pierre Drucker (BMC Racing) rounded off the top-three.

With the stage neutralised early on after rider and team protests over an unsafe course, Chris Froome (Team Sky) wheeled in 16 minutes down just behind a group of other GC riders, their overall positions confirmed at the end of the third lap.

Bennett’s victories in the Giro have been all the more impressive having lost his main leadout man Rüdiger on stage 6. His team had to work for it today though, as a break featuring Quick Step Floors’ Florian Sénéchal saw them chasing unaided on the final lap. The Belgian squad then massed at the front in the last 3km.

With four men peeling off ahead of Viviani, the maglia ciclamino’s task looked straightforward as he hit the wind in the final metres, even more so considering Bennett’s mini-battle with Niccolò Bonifazio (Bahrain-Merida) for the Italian’s wheel. Bennett came out on top though, and sped past Viviani in the closing metres to take another victory - the seventh Giro stage win for an Irish rider.

Bennett was almost lost for words when asked to explain how he won the stage, noting how tough the last week of the race had been.

“I don’t know [how I managed to win]. The last two day I was suffering so much,” he said. “I think I went too deep in the first week and a little bit in the second week and I paid for it during the last two days.”

“I think it was mainly down to the teamwork today. When that break went on the final lap they went eyeballs up and I can’t thank them enough - they were amazing.”

“I don’t know [what the next goal is] - we’ll see,” he added. “I don’t know what shape I’ll be in for the [Irish] Nationals but it’ll be a dream to have the national champions jersey and to really represent the national colours on a big stage like this.”

Of course, the Giro’s final stage also sees the rest of the prizes confirmed - Froome’s GC victory comes with the blue mountains jersey, while Miguel Ángel López (Astana) took home the white young rider’s jersey and Viviani takes the cyclamen points jersey.

As for the minor, jersey-less competitions - Androni’s Davide Ballerini won the intermediate sprint and combativity competitions, his teammate Marco Frapporti won the Fuga Pinarello classification after spending 640km in the break, Team Sky won the Super Team competition, and the Fair Play prize was shared among Bardiani-CSF, LottoNL-Jumbo and AG2R La Mondiale.

How it happened

A largely ceremonial stage, the Giro visited Italy’s capital Rome for the first time since 2009. It was the fourth time the race has finished there - the others being 1911 and 1950 - and only the fifth stage finish in Rome since the 1960s.

Ignatas Konovalovas in 2009, Oreste Conte in 1950 and Ezio Corlaita in 1911 had previously taken the final stage honours in the capital, with a bunch sprint expected this time around. The stage itself featured ten laps of a flat 11.5km course, passing sights such as the Colosseum, Altare della Patria and the Piazza del Popolo.

The early stages of the day were characterised by numerous high-profile riders holding discussions with race officials. The day’s course was the topic, with riders seemingly surprised by the state of the course, including a cobbled section, while reports of various directors being unhappy about a lack of marshalling on the route.

With around 75km of the stage left to race, it was announced that GC times would be taken after three laps, with time bonuses cancelled. Soon after, an 18-man group broke away from the peloton, with Ballerini, Chris Juul-Jensen (Mitchelton-Scott), Alexey Lutsenko (Astana), Vyacheslav Kuznetsov (Katusha-Alpecin) and Krists Neilands (Israel Cycling Academy) among those to make the break.

Meanwhile, a group of the GC riders dropped from the back of the peloton to form a gruppetto, leaving the racing to the sprinters and their leadout men.

Up front, the gap from break to peloton never exceeded 30 seconds, with the sprinters understandably keen to keep them on a short leash given the short stage length. Lap seven saw Juul-Jensen and Kuznetsov jump off the front of the break as the remainder of the group was absorbed.

The duo held their gap at around ten seconds until they were eventually caught with 13km remaining. Quick-Step Floors, Trek-Segafredo and Bora-Hansgrohe were visible on the front heading into the final lap. Ryan Mullen (Trek-Segafredo), Tony Martin (Katusha-Alpecin), Danny Van Poppel (LottoNL-Jumbo), Florian Sénéchal (Quick Step Floors) and Mattia Cattaneo (Androni-Sidermec) went on the offensive on the final lap, though the Bora-led peloton swept them up 3.5km from the line.

After that, the stage was set for the last big battle of the 2018 Giro d’Italia. A fight among the sprinters once again, with Bennett jumping from Viviani’s wheel to prevail for the third time in three weeks.

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