The hopes for Egan Bernal to recapture the pink leader's jersey at the Giro d'Italia looked dangerously close to a nightmare on Tuesday, as the Netcompany Ineos climber rolled backwards from the peloton on the single categorised climb of stage 4.
The 2021 Giro champion had put his climbing abilities on display Saturday in Bulgaria, moving effortlessly across a trio of climbs on stage 2, along the way snatching six bonus seconds at the Red Bull KM and jumping more than 100 places into third on the general classification.
However, Bernal suffered unexpectedly on the lone categorised climb of stage 4, the long second-category ascent of Cozzo Tunno. Netcompany Ineos were among the teams setting the pace to the base of the ascent, where the road had the highest gradients of 7%, then settled closer to 5% for the majority of the 14.4 kilometres.
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However, 1.5km from the summit Bernal lost touch with the front bunch.
Once on the long descent, Bernal had dropped out of the virtual top 10 on general classification, and was forced into a panicked chase with around half a minute to make up.
Teammate Ben Turner waited for him to assist in the chase, any warnings of a disaster began to decay as Bernal found himself in a small chase group that included fellow GC candidate Derek Gee (Lidl-Trek), who was fighting back from a mechanical problem.
With 20km to go, Bernal and the chase group were only 25 seconds back. He tagged back to the lead group and finished safely in the 42-rider group with Thymen Arensman and Turner, the Brit contesting the sprint for fourth place. Both Bernal and Arensman slipped one spot each in the GC, now fourth and fifth, respectively.
At the start of the day, Sport Director Leo Basso had said it was an "open" stage, with an opportunity for Netcompany Ineos to put pressure on other teams on the climb.
However, Bernal's struggles, while not costing him time on GC, expose doubts over his condition and question marks ahead of the much more difficult important climbing tests to come in this Giro.
Bernal has not yet spoken to the media about his performance on stage 4.
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