The riders were grabbing for drinks and caked in salt marks from sweat as stage 18 of the Giro d'Italia finished in the sweltering heat of Cesano Maderno. After a week of grey skies and rain, the sun was a welcome sight when it finally came out, but the change of weather also ushered in a change of plan on the final transitional stage of the race.
All morning, debate had fizzed around the teams over whether stage 18 would be a breakaway day or a sprint day, and at one point, it looked like it was going to be both. Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) all got in a large breakaway that got up the road, with the main peloton seemingly happy for these riders to battle it out up front, away from the GC riders taking a well-earned easier day.
However, that isn't how it panned out. Instead, the combination of tactical racing, man-marking, and the heat taking it out of the riders saw a surprising split occur in the break, with the expected favourites behind and a group of opportunists ahead. From there, Nico Denz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) would attack to take a solo win, turning the expected outcome on its head.
For many riders, a stage like this is the only kind of day where they can take a Grand Tour stage win, so there were some tired and disappointed riders in the group that Denz escaped from.
Cyclingnews columnist Larry Warbasse was one of the riders who made it into the right side of the split – though perhaps not through intention – but ended up finishing 10th on the stage.
"To be honest I don't know exactly what happened but I was in the front, a split happened, I was in the front split. It wasn't really like a crazy attack or anything, so I got lucky with good positioning," he told Cyclingnews and Eurosport at the finish.
"I just messed up at the finish. First of all, I'm not exactly the world's greatest sprinter, so I probably should have tried a little bit more to escape. Once or twice, I was with Nico, and then he did a really good job - going into a technical section, he was on the front, and he pushed, and whoever was on his wheel let it go, and we never saw him again. I think we played a bit too much but that's just how it goes."
Despite some riders perhaps 'playing' too much tactically, Warbasse wasn't surprised that a split happened how it did, with some tired bodies in the sweltering heat after a big fight to get into the break, and not at easy parcours despite the flat finish.
"Everyone was dead, so it wasn't really a choice, I don't think," he said.
Having got away from the sprinters, but then ultimately lost out on the stage, there was a clear feeling of disappointment from Warbasse, who was hoping for more from the stage.
"It was OK. Glad I at least got a top 10 out of the Giro, but you always want to get the best result possible, and I didn't come here for a top 10, I would have liked a stage win," he said. "But it hasn't been the easiest Giro so far, so to get up there was cool."
That tactical riding and 'playing' that Warbasse referenced also seemed to thwart the likes of Lidl-Trek and Wout van Aert, who found themselves such clear favourites that they were marked out of the action.
"Most of the guys were watching me, Wout, Mads and maybe Kaden, and if I would try probably everybody would follow me, so it's always a bit of gambling," Mathias Vacek of Lidl-Trek explained to Eurosport at the finish.
"Today I was on Wout's wheel and trying to follow him because I believed he would attack and we could go away, but a lot of guys were on our wheels also, and in the end, just a totally different break went than we expected.
"We were gambling and watching each other, and in the end, some other guys went away, who maybe wouldn't be [thought of] as the strongest, but it's always like this."
Indeed, these final-week transitional ways do often end differently to expected, with tired legs less able to control the race according to the usual script, but as the breakaway fought for the stage and allowed the GC teams to hold back, business as usual should resume on Friday as the race returns to the mountains for two final showdown stages.
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