Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek) showed he is a third-week Grand Tour rider on the mountain finish to Carì in Switzerland, finishing with the riders fighting for the podium and moving up to sixth overall in the Giro d'Italia.
Just last Friday, the Canadian was dropped earlier on the climb up to the Pila finish. Today, after the third rest day, as the third and final week in the mountains began, he was able to hang tough and move up the GC.
"It's really good for the confidence that the legs are getting to where they need to be," Gee-West said beyond the finish line, the sweat pouring from every pore of his body.
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He finished fifth, 1:18 down on stage winner and now four-time mountain stage winner Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), but finished just a few seconds behind Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM), Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Thymen Arensman (Netcompany Ineos).
They jumped him for the bonus seconds and bragging rights at the finish line but Gee-West had chased them down on the testing climb up to Carì.
He moved up three places in the GC to sixth, jumping past Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who cracked and lost 18 minutes, Ben O'Connor (Jayco AlUla) who again suffered and Michael Storer (Tudor), who is Gee-West nearest rival and a similar gutsy GC survivor.
"I'm really happy," Gee-West confided, even before knowing his GC gains.
"They're super good at punching it on the climbs, and I can't do that but then with a kilometre to go I caught them as they were going easy.
"I knew if I kept going at that pace, I'd just get dropped on the kicks again, so I tried to go myself. I didn't actually go anywhere, and then they kicked at the end, but I got a ride like that, and I was good today. I lasted a bit longer than a few more guys."
Gee-West rose from 47th to fourth during the 2025 Giro, riding from tenth to fourth in the final week. In 2024, he was ninth overall in the Tour de France after another consistent ride.
In 2023, he went on breaks on seven stages of the Giro, including five in the last eight days, finishing second on four stages.
He is clearly a Grand Tour rider, even if the pain never gets easier.
"You can feel better every day and maybe relative to the other guys but at the same time you feel worse every day because you're getting deeper into a Grandy," Gee-West suggested.
"It's really hard to know how you really feel. It's a bit of a surprise on every climb as to where I'm going to settle in the group."
Gee-West is cautious because he knows there is a lot of hard, mountainous racing to come this week before the final celebration stage in Rome.
"There are some really good signs, but stages 19 and 20 are coming up and are going to be massive, massive days. There's still a lot of suffering to come," he said.
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