Giro d'Italia: Hindley wins queen stage at Laghi di Cancano

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Jai Hindley (Team Sunweb) took victory at Laghi di Cancano atop the Torri di Fraele on stage 18 at the Giro d'Italia, ending a day of high drama at the race by outsprinting Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos Grenadiers) to the line after six hours of racing in the Dolomites.

"It’s such a beautiful stage today, with such epic climbs. I’m just over the moon to get the win," Hindley said. "I saw the opportunity to take a stage and I took it. I think Tao was pretty strong and was also climbing at a really high level here, he’s been super impressive. It wasn’t our tactic to go solo. I followed the plan, got the stage and I’m happy with that."

Pello Bilbao (Bahrain McLaren) took third at the top, 46 seconds down, but the biggest story of the stage was the collapse of maglia rosa João Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep) who was dropped 48 kilometres from the line on the Passo dello Stelvio as Sunweb pushed the pace.

The Dutch team are now in the driving seat with three stages remaining, their man Wilco Kelderman taking over the race lead despite being dropped by the lead group of Hindley, Geoghegan Hart and Rohan Dennis at the top of the Stelvio and riding alone for 46 kilometres to the finish.

"I knew Tao was going to ride all the way to the line to try to get as much time as he could, I was told to sit on him and not do any work, which I did, because I knew Wilco was most likely going into the jersey," Hindley said.

Kelderman, who took fifth on the day, 2:18 down, now enjoys a 12-second lead over teammate Hindley, while Geoghegan Hart fills the final podium spot, a further three seconds back. Almeida, meanwhile, dropped from first down to fifth overall after losing 4:51, while Bilbao moves within striking distance of the podium at 1:19 down.

"It was a crazy day, super hard, the hardest day of my life," Kelderman said. "It was a super fight. It couldn't be any better for us with Jai getting the stage win and me in pink. I knew it would be close but I got it, so I'm happy. We dropped Almeida quite early on the Stelvio and then it was a race - Ineos was super strong with two guys and I couldn't hold them. So then it was just a race for myself behind them.

I'm happy with today, now we recover and make plans and then we see the last stages what happens."

The carnage began midway up the Passo dello Stelvio, the highest climb of the race, when Sunweb's efforts saw Almeida lose contact with the favourites group, quickly followed out the back by a wealth of other big names, including Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo) and Jakob Fuglsang (Astana).

As the race reached the snowline, riders were scattered down the mountain as the general classification quickly turned into an Ineos vs Sunweb battle. Hindley did his job, sticking to an Ineos wheel all the way to the finish, while Kelderman ploughed a lonely furrow down the freezing descent, through the valley and up the final climb, just about 'saving' pink despite having never worn it.

While he now leads the Giro, heading up an unexpected Sunweb one-two with a sprint stage, a triple-Sestriere test and the Milan time trial left, the damage done by his punishing ride has yet to be seen, with the 24- and 25-year-olds, Hindley and Geoghegan Hart looking in the ascendancy.

How it unfolded

With the revamp of stage 20 and the loss of the Colle dell'Agnello, Col d'Izoard and Montgenèvre, the race to Laghi di Cancano over the Stelvio on stage 18 became the Giro's queen stage overnight, the main battleground for the maglia rosa in the final days of the race.

The action started from as the flag dropped in the commune of Pinzolo at the foot of the Passo Campo Magno. Starting off heading up the climb (14.2km at 5.8 per cent), the riders fought to make the breakaway as they retraced the wheel tracks of stage 17's finish up Madonna di Campiglio.

A group of 25 riders jumped away by the top of the second-category climb, with maglia azzurra Ruben Guerreiro (EF Pro Cycling) among them, taking the maximum eight points over the top despite his main rival, Vini Zabù-Brado-KTM's Giovanni Visconti, withdrawing before the start due to patellar tendonitis.

Israel Start-Up Nation's Spanish climber Daniel Navarro pushed on alone down the descent as behind the break and vastly reduced peloton merged. The Spaniard would soon have company though, as Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers), Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Soudal), Stéphene Rossetto (Cofidis), Fabio Felline (Astana) and Dario Cataldo (Movistar) joined him to form the early break after 30 kilometres of racing.

On the road to the second climb of the day, the first-category Passo Castrin, another group of riders came across, with stage 17 winner Ben O'Connor (NTT Pro Cycling) out in the break for the third day in a row along with Alessandro Tonelli (Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè), Ben Swift (Ineos Grenadiers), Hector Carretero (Movistar). They were shortly joined by Guerreiro, Joe Dombrowski (UAE Team Emirates), Matthew Holmes (Lotto Soudal), Louis Meintjes (NTT Pro Cycling) and the Movistar pair of Antonio Pedrero and Sergio Samitier to make it 16 out front.

Deceuninck-QuickStep, Ineos Grenadiers and Sunweb, the squads of the big general classification hitters, controlled the peloton thereafter, keeping the gap on a fairly tight leash – a maximum of four minutes.

De Gendt would take the 40 points over the Castrin, leaving Guerreiro to bolster his KOM lead with 18 in second place. A long, stepped descent and a ride along the Adige Valley brought a quiet mid-section of the stage, with an 80-kilometre ride to the foot of the Stelvio, the high-point of the race, measuring in at 24.8 kilometres at an average of 7.4 per cent.

Cataldo was the first to drop from the break on the lower slopes of the climb, swiftly followed by Rossetto and Tonelli as Meintjes worked on the front for one of the stars of the Giro's final week, O'Connor.

As Sunweb and Ineos massed on the front for the early kilometres of a GC showdown, O'Connor took off 55 kilometres from the line. Only 20 men remained in what could reasonably be called a 'peloton' at that point, with the big moves soon to come.

O'Connor quickly built a 30-second gap ahead of a rapidly reducing break that surprisingly didn't include Guerreiro anymore as the EF rider dropped back to the peloton. Meanwhile, 11 kilometres from the top of the climb – on the steepest slopes of nine per cent-plus with 50 kilometres left to run – Guerreiro's compatriot, race leader João Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep) was in trouble, clinging on to the back of the GC group.

Domenico Pozzovivo (NTT Pro Cycling) had already dropped at that point as Sunweb pushed the pace on the Giro's highest climb. Almeida would make it back, with Guerreiro aiding him with a quick turn, but Sam Oomen's turn on the front saw him dropped for good two kilometres later.

Chris Hamilton and Jai Hindley, who lay third overall continued to lead the Sunweb train, distancing more top 10 contenders in the shape of Pello Bilbao (Bahrain McLaren) and the Bora-Hansgrohe duo of Rafał Majka and Patrick Konrad.

Ineos took over the pacemaking at 48 kilometres to go, with Rohan Dennis working for Tao Geoghegan Hart. The Australian's stint would transform the race even further, detaching Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo) and Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) and leaving the Ineos pair alone with Kelderman and Hindley.

It wasn't long before Kelderman was in trouble, too, hanging off the back as Hindley stuck to Geoghegan Hart's wheel. The quartet – by that point 1:30 up on Almeida and 30 seconds up on the Nibali-Fuglsang group – soon caught O'Connor before spitting the Australian out the back along with Kelderman for a second time.

Hindley, lying one second up on Geoghegan Hart, once again hung on to the Ineos pair, as Kelderman rode alone 30 seconds back at 42 kilometres to go, five kilometres from the top of the monster climb at the first hints of the snowline. Meanwhile, Almeida, Majka and Konrad lay 2:30 down as the Bilbao-Fuglsang group, lying a minute down, dropped Nibali.

After the hostilities down in the forest, the situation settled down as the riders made their way to the snowbound peak of the 2,746-metre high pass – the second highest in Europe – with Kelderman ceding seconds as Almeida dropped to over three minutes down.

Hindley struggled to don his jacket for a good five hundred metres, but still stuck with the Ineos duo, Dennis taking the Cima Coppi prize as the leader over the top. Kelderman crossed the summit 46 seconds down, with Fuglsang-Bilbao at 1:45, Nibali at around 2:30, and the maglia rosa at 3:40.

The jacket problems continued on the freezing descent towards Isolaccia, with both Sunweb men failing to zip theirs up in contrast to the Ineos pair, an annoyed Kelderman throwing his into the road three kilometres into the descent.

As the riders took the road past Bormio at the bottom, the situation was largely the same, Kelderman 45 seconds down, 1:25 to Fuglsang-Bilbao and Almeida at 3:30. The intermediate sprint lay between the leaders and the start of the final climb of Torri di Fraele to Laghi di Cancano, and Ineos pulled a fast one on Hindley, Geoghegan Hart taking three seconds and Dennis two to vaunt the Briton a second up on the virtual GC.

Dennis rode on to the bottom, a stellar job for his younger team leader, pulling off with the gap to Kelderman at 1:40 as the Dutchman suffered on his own. As Kelderman started the climb, meanwhile, Fuglsang and Bilbao caught and passed him, leaving the pink jersey-elect for dead.

Up front, Geoghegan Hart led the way on the 8.7-kilometre, 6.8 per cent average climb, as Hindley could point to Kelderman in virtual pink and take an armchair ride up the 21 hairpin bends. Two kilometres into the climb, Nibali was caught by the Almeida group, 4:30 down, while Bilbao shed Fuglsang at a minute behind the leaders and Kelderman lay 1:35 back.

The drama that unfolded on the Stelvio didn't replicate itself on the Torri di Fraele, with the gaps holding quite steady, barring Bilbao closing in to with 45 seconds of the leaders. Hindley stuck to Geoghegan Hart's wheel all the way up, their riders anticipating a sprint for the stage and their GC placings.

The Briton took the mountain points at the top but could do nothing to stop a more rested Hindley beating him to the line and taking four bonus seconds back on GC. Bilbao rolled home 46 seconds later, launching himself into podium contention, while Fuglsang was fourth at 1:25, moving up to sixth overall.

A tense countdown followed as Kelderman drew close to the finish, the 29-year-old who had looked in dire straits at the bottom of the climb finishing his day 2:18 down on the leader and just about taking the pink jersey ahead of his teammate, the stage winner.