Giro d'Italia stage 16: Jonas Vingegaard crushes climb to Carì to win his fourth stage

Race leader Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) took his fourth stage win and his first in the pink jersey on stage 16 of the Giro d'Italia, sailing away on the mountaintop finish at Cari to extend his GC lead.

After the peloton once again denied the breakaway a chance to win, Visma-Lease a Bike set an intense pace on early ramps of the 11.8km, putting all their rivals in trouble and setting up Vingegaard's attack with just under 7km to go.

No one could follow him for even a moment, and the Dane soloed to the win by over a minute, making further big gains in his hunt for the overall win in Rome.

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"My teammates and I were very motivated for it, we wanted to try to win in the pink jersey, but obviously it can also go wrong, so we just chose the first option to try it, because if we failed then we would have another [chance to win in pink] as well," Vingegaard said at the finish.

"I think it was a very nice, very hard climb. It's a long climb, it took around half an hour, and again my teammates today did an amazing job. They pulled from the start, they didn't give the breakaway any chances, and on the last climb they reduced the bunch. Then I had to do the rest, and I'm happy once again that I can pay back my teammates."

Now with four stages under his belt in this Giro, Vingegaard is within reach of matching the six wins that Tadej Pogačar took on his path to victory in 2024, though that didn't seem particularly on his mind on Tuesday.

"I take it day by day. Now I have four stages, then we see what we will do for the rest of the week," he said.

A small group of GC contenders battled it out for second and third on the day, with Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) winning the uphill sprint to finish second and move up to second overall, whilst Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) rounded out the top three.

Thymen Arensman (Netcompany Ineos) took fourth with Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek) in fifth as there were only minor gaps between the four chasing GC contenders.

A strong break went earlier in the day, with a lead group of four emerging in Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Chris Harper (Pinarello-Q36.5) and Einer Rubio (Movistar) but after several breakaway wins, the peloton weren't keen for another one on Tuesday, and they were all caught by the final 9km.

Visma then set a brutal pace on the final climb to Cari, rapidly whittling down the lead group before Vingegaard put in his deadly acceleration with 6.6km to go.

Gall tried to chase, but soon had to settle with joining up with the Netcompany Ineos-led chase group as Vingegaard's GC rivals simply tried to limit their losses, rather than do anything to prevent them.

How it unfolded

Stage 16 took the riders to the Giro's latest summit finish at Carì, atop an 11.6km climb, but the run-in was far from easy, with four category-2 and -3 climbs in quick succession in the middle part of the stage to get the legs hurting again after the rest day.

It was a short and sweet stage, only 113km long, so there was always going to be a big fight for the break, as we've seen on many occasions this Giro. The attacks started as soon as the flag dropped, and within just a few kilometres, 11 riders were up the road, but the battle did not stop there. With 90km to go, a large group of over 20 riders bridged across to the break, but this was quickly deemed unsuitable, and all the attackers were brought back with 84km to go.

So far, many riders had already been dropped due to the speed, but it didn't take long for the next round of attacks to start. With just over 80km to go, a group of eight got away over the first climb of the day, including three-time stage winner Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and former pink jersey Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek).

Small in size and strong in composition, this group started to solidify a lead and were joined by a few more riders, making it Narváez and Ciccone in the front plus Chris Harper (Pinarello-Q36.5), Jardi van der Lee (EF Education-EasyPost), Jan Christen (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Diego Ulissi (XDS Astana), Einer Rubio, Juan Pedro López (both Movistar), Alan Hatherly (Jayco AlUla), Frank van den Broek (Picnic PostNL Raisin), Filippo Zana (Soudal-QuickStep) and Alessandro Tonelli (Polti VisitMalta).

The presence of Harper, only 13th on GC, was a slight concern for the peloton, and it was likely for this reason that the breakaway was initially kept pretty close, not allowed to build up a gap of much more than a minute.

Over the next climb, the pace set by Harper saw the break start to split, with Harper, Ciccone, Rubio, Narváez and Ulissi going clear over the top with their former companions dropped and soon reabsorbed by the peloton. Ulissi was the hanger-on in that group and the next to be dropped as the four leaders found a pace they could all keep up with. Over the four successive climbs, they built their gap out to nearly two minutes, whilst Visma kept things controlled behind.

Going into the final 30km and the valley before the last climb, the leaders were holding their two-minute lead and working together rather than attacking each other, but there was a sense behind that some teams did not want another breakaway victory.

That gap came down really rapidly as the road started rising before the official start of the climb, and by 20km to go, the gap was only 1:13, with the break's day set to be over prematurely. Frustrated once more, Ciccone pulled the pin on the break before the climb began, with Narváez also sitting up and drifting back to the bunch rather than fight on at the front.

Harper and Rubio pushed on as long as they could, but it was in vain. Harper was the final survivor and won the Red Bull KM, with Rubio caught at 10.7km to go, and Harper swept up a kilometre later.

Hitting the base of the climb, it was Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe who joined Visma and started setting a high pace, stretching and thinning out the already reduced peloton. The first big name to struggle was, perhaps surprisingly, Red Bull's own rider, Giulio Pellizzari, which quickly made his team take their foot off the gas.

With Visma back on the front and in control, Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious) and Ben O'Connor (Jayco AlUla) were the next GC riders to drift out of the now smaller than 20-rider lead group. Visma just kept burning through riders to whittle down the group, and with 7.7km to go, only Piganzoli was left in front of Vingegaard. Within a kilometre, he'd dispatched with all but five riders, and as soon as he pulled off, Vingegaard put in one big acceleration that no one could match.

Gall was the rider second on the road, but behind him, Thymen Arensman had Egan Bernal pacing for him in a group of three with Hindley. They soon regrouped with Gall, but the pace in the chase was not super high, with Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek) able to come back and rejoin them too, along with Piganzoli.

Meanwhile, the undisputed leader, Vingegaard, had quickly built a gap of 45 seconds, which was then a minute, as he looked totally untouchable on a summit finish once again. In the chase group, Bernal pulled off in the final two kilometres after a big effort for his teammate Arensman, and the Dutchman then took up the pace, but couldn't really shake off Gall, Hindley and Gee-West.

As Vingegaard sailed to the win, Gall led the chasing GC group home 1:09 down on the Dane, two seconds ahead of Hindley, moving up to second on GC at Eulálio's expense, but his gap to first has widened to 4:03. Gee-West also moved up on GC, from ninth to sixth.

Losers on the day were Egan Bernal, finishing 2:04 down, Michael Storer (Tudor) at 2:18, Eulalio at 3:04 and Ben O'Connor finishing 3:48 down on the winner. Despite losing time, Bernal actually moved up on GC, now 10th overall.

Though Vingegaard only cemented his lead, there was a shuffle on the GC, with Gall, Arensman and Hindley all shifting up a spot whilst Eulálio dropped from second overall to fifth. He may have only been in pink for a few days, but Vingegaard looks unstoppable at this Giro, with now only five stages standing between him and an inaugural Giro victory in Rome.

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