Giro d'Italia: Jonas Vingegaard outclimbs rivals to solo to stage 14 victory and seize race lead

A searing, finely calculated attack by Jonas Vingegaard 4.6 kilometres from the line on stage 14 of the Giro d'Italia has netted the Danish star his first overall leader's jersey of the race, his third summit victory in eight days, and set the Visma-Lease a Bike rider up perfectly for final victory in Rome a week on Sunday.

When Vingegaard made his move, unlike on the Blockhaus just over a week ago, there was simply no response from any of his rivals, with the Danish racer powering up the sundrenched slopes of Pila alone and at the head of the field.
It didn't matter that everybody had expected this attack and that Visma-Lease a Bike had further signalled their intent with a blistering pursuit of a dangerous 21-rider break. Even if Vingegaard was not climbing the final slopes of Pila at the stratospheric speeds we have seen when at peak performance in other Grand Tours, there was literally nothing anybody could do to respond.

Finally, Vingegaard crossed the line with a 48-second advantage on his closest pursuer, Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM), Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) at 58 seconds, with the rest of the field even further behind. Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious), the long-standing GC leader, finally threw in the towel nine kilometres from the line, after a courageous nine-day defence of the line, but crossed the line around 2:30 back, retaining his place on the virtual podium behind Vingegaard and Gall.

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The day, though, belonged to Vingegaard, able to move into the overall for the final week of the Giro and showing once again that even if he is not firing on as many climbing cylinders as he may be in July, he remains several levels above the rest in Italy.

"This one is the one I will remember the most," Vingegaard said when asked how this latest summit finish victory compared to the previous two.

"Today we made a plan from the start with the team, we wanted to control the race and that's what my teammates did. They did an incredible job the whole day."

"It was impressive how they rode. I'm so proud of my teammates and so proud that I can pay them back. It's a super nice win."

How it unfolded

Almost as soon as the race had left the Alpine town of Aosta on a blisteringly hot day, the peloton hit the first of four major climbs, the Cat.1 Saint-Barthélémy (km 18.1). Fairly predictably, given the shortness of the stage, such a tough early challenge produced a large breakaway of non-GC favourites, with Jardi van der Lee (EF Education-EasyPost) and Jan Christen (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) taking the initiative but being rapidly followed by a group of no less than 21 riders. 

Nominally, the most dangerous amongst these 23 on GC was former Vuelta a España leader David de La Cruz (Pinarello-Q36.5). However, given his advantage on overall leader Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious) was a hefty 6:43, the break first sparked little reaction beyond a watching brief on the front by Visma-Lease a Bike. Movistar were the best represented with four riders in the move, including stage racing specialist Enric Mas and the longstanding leader of the Giro back in 2022, Juanpe López, and 2026 triple Giro stage winner Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was in their two. By the summit, the 21 chasers were closing in fast on stage leaders Van der Lee and Christen on the fast technical descent, and they reached the two ahead.

Come the return to the valley road and the long grind up to the Cat.3 ascent of Doues, the easiest ascent of the day, the 23's advantage hovered at around two minutes, with Pinarello-Q36.5's Mark Donovan and Nikolas Zukowsky doing the bulk of the work. Possibly the biggest interest point during this point came when Narváez managed to snatch maximum points in the intermediate sprint, pushing the Ecuadorian national champion in the maglia ciclamina for at least a day. 

Doues itself marked a point where Uno-X's Andreas Leknessund, working for Johannes Kulset, upped the pace in the break, causing it to split briefly before Igor Arrieta, UAE's third representative in the move, blasted off over the top in a short-lived solo run. Meanwhile Visma-Lease a Bike were keen to keep the gap down to under a manageable four minute mark, in their strongest signalling of intent on Vingegaard's part. What was perhaps more unexpected was how Bahrain Victorious added their support to the pursuit. 

Before the Cat.1 Lin Noir, Arrieta opted to wait and so it was that the 21-rider group reached the foot of the first of three key final ascents together and with a 3:50 advantage.

Despite the intense heat, Visma-Lease a Bike continued to push on hard on the Lin Noir courtesy of an immense effort from Tim Rex, but Pinarello-Q36.5 and Movistar were determined to drive on their own account too. So even if there were only 13 riders of the original 23 on the front by the summit, they still had a 3:20 advantage.

Coming off the Lin Noir on the short descent before the Verrogne, the front group comprised a struggling Van der Lee (EF Education-EasyPost), Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Mas, Juanpe López and Einer Rubio (all Movistar), Jan Hirt (NSN), David De La Cruz and Donovan (Pinarell-Q36.5), Gianmarco Garofoli (Soudal-QuickStep), Wout Poels (Unibet Rose Rockets), Arrieta and the Uno-X racer Kulset. The two GC teams with key interests in the pack were Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe with Aleksandr Vlasov and Jayco-AUla with former Giro mountains winner Koen Bouwman, but following the long descent towards Pila, the writing was all but on the wall for the 13 ahead, as the 30-strong main group, led by an implacable Visma squad, piled on the pressure even more. Just over two minutes in hand really didn't feel like enough given the blistering pace behind in what increasingly looked like a planned knock-out blow by the Dutch team.

On Pilas' wide-open, relentlessly steady ascent, another acceleration by Garofoli forced the break to respond again, followed by Hirt, but the main interest was increasingly on the Visma-led squad behind. Rex had long since gone, only for Campenaerts to intensify the pressure, forcing outsiders like Markel Beloki (EF Education-Easypost), 11th overall, to sit up long before the main Visma act had swung into action. After a third of the climb, the front group by this point was now down to Ciccone, Mas, Rubio, Hirt, De La Cruz, Poels and Vlasov, all of them hardened breakaway fighters. Yet there was increasing desperation in their series of lunges and hesitations, even as Campenaerts forged on behind.

Nine kilometres from the line  an acceleration by Sepp Kuss produced even more damage as race leader Eulálio gradually was inched out the back. What was less expected, perhaps was how Ben O’Connor (Jayco-AlUla),  fifth overall, also found himself in equally serious trouble so far from the top. 

Kuss acceleration lasted for a full three or four kilometres before Davide Piganzoli then took over, even while Eulálio's disadvantage dropped to over a minute and O'Connor fell to 1:10 back. In the last-ditch move in the break, Ciccone raged against the dying of the light with Rubio following, yet Piganzoli's move paid off big time, cruising past his compatriot and the Colombian and reducing the front to just eight riders.

Then, as even Arensman and Hindley fell behind, everybody else was scrambling for Vingegaard's back wheel. Yet when he attacked with 4.6 kilometres to go there was nothing to be done: barring the Dane himself, the rest of the field were mere extras in a one-man show.

"It's always a bit of an improvisation, we said when it got steeper in the end we wanted to try," Vingegaard explained later. "Then with Piganzoli - I almost didn't have to attack today, he almost rode everybody off my wheel. That was really impressive."

Where Piganzoli left off, Vingegaard continued, steadily opening up a gap with each stroke of the pedals. This wasn't, perhaps, quite as dramatic a masterpiece as we'd seen in other Vingegaard high mountain moves, but it proved more than enough to ensure that with two kilometres to go, closest pursuer Gall was at more than 30 seconds.

The gap continued to increase slowly but remorselessly, rising to 49 seconds by the time Vingegaard delivered his trademark triple kiss of the family photo on his handlebars just as he reached the line. In the process, he has now leapfrogged ahead of Eulálio to 2:26 on GC, with Gall in third at 2:50. These aren't the jaw-dropping margins of Tadej Pogačar in 2024, by any means, but they are ample and with each summit finish, they are heading constantly in the same direction.

Vingegaard is now in pink, and if nothing is predictable in the Giro - Visma know for both better and worse how the race can be upended right at the last minute - after all the speculation about the Dane's illness, the Visma leader has provided all the answers. And while he politely told his interviewer that "Milan is a very nice city, it will be very special to have the pink jersey going into Milan tomorrow," his being in the same colour going into Rome, too, in a week's time, now has the feel of being all but a forgone conclusion.

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