Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) punched his way to second place on the stage 16 mountaintop finish in Cari in a performance that saw him move into second place overall at the Giro d'Italia.
The Austrian admitted that it was the best he could do against an unstoppable Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), who rode away with his fourth summit victory.
"Yeah, he showed again who is in charge here. Also, as a team, it is really impressive. Jonas is just doing his thing," Gall told the press in an interview just metres past the finish line.
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Visma-Lease a Bike led the reduced peloton onto the final ascent to Cari, which marked the fourth summit finish at this Giro d'Italia - and Vingegaard has won atop all four: Blockhaus, Corno alle Scale, Pila and now Cari.
In contrast, Gall has finished runner-up on all four mountain top finishes, 13 seconds behind Vingegaard on Blockhaus, 12 seconds back on Corno alle Scale, 49 seconds back at Pila, but a much larger 1:09 back in Cari.
"I thought that I would do the same as the last hard stages, just do my own pace, but that was not possible today," Gall said.
To his credit, Gall was the only rider who could respond to Vingegaard when he attacked with 6.6km to go on the nearly 12km ascent, which had an average gradient of 8% but steeper sections of up to 9.8% at the 4km, 6km, and 10km-to-go marks.
"I was certainly expecting it to be this hard," Gall said. "I knew it was a really hard climb, and also with the temperatures. I expected that it was going to be a hard final."
As Vingegaard increased his pace and settled into a rhythm on this way to victory, Gall put forth several surges to try and gain time on Thymen Arensman and Egan Bernal (Netcompany Ineos), Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) and Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek).
"Thymen still had Bernal to help him. But then I knew about the flatter part, and then I thought it would make more sense to wait for them," Gall replayed the final kilometres of the ascent in the race for second place.
"I was trying, but then I could sit on their wheel and do a little sprint at the end. I was digging quite deep to gain a few seconds again. It was nice to ... I had to give it a try, and second place is super nice."
Previous maglia rosa Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain-Victorious) lost time on the ascent and dropped three places in the overall standings to fifth, while Gall's performance bumped him up to second place overall.
Vingegaard has a firm hold on the maglia rosa, now leading the race by 4:03 ahead of Gall, 4:27 ahead of Arensman and 5:00 ahead of Hindley, with the next summit finishes on stage 19 at Alleghe (Piani di Pezzè) and stage 20 at Piancavallo.
"I was feeling super good today, but in the final I was missing a little bit, but, yeah, it was also a very short and very intense stage," Gall said. "My team did a really great job again. I was also a great start to the third week."
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