Giro d'Italia: Josef Cerny wins shortened stage 19

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Josef Cerny (CCC) took a well-deserved win on stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia after attacking from the day’s main break with 21km to go. The CCC rider had been on the attack all day and he narrowly held off a late chase from Victor Campenaerts (NTT) to take the biggest win of his career, and provide CCC with a farewell victory before they leave the sport at the end of the season.

Campenaerts finished second on the stage with Jacopo Mosca (Trek-Segafredo) crossing the line in third place.

"We were standing in the start line and the organiser said we could shorten it a bit. It was very nice because we had the last three days really heavy and it was a hard day, especially with the rain. I'm really happy I was lucky in the breakaway. We were working together. In the final, it was just who had the better legs. I'm really happy. I still don't believe it. It was so quick, it's incredible. I can't describe it," Cerny said.

In the race for the maglia rosa, Wilco Kelderman (Sunweb) maintained his slender 12 second lead over his teammate Jai Hindley, with Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos Grenadiers) remaining a further three seconds down.

The win came after farcical scenes at the start of the race due to a dispute between the riders and the race organisers, RCS Sport. The peloton, exhausted from the race, the long transfers, and the early starts were uncomfortable with the notion of then tackling the longest stage of the Giro in poor conditions. Sections of the peloton raised their disapproval ahead of the 258km stage before it was due to leave Morbegno after the riders’ disquiet had increased when RCS announced on Thursday night that an additional 5km would need to be added to the route due to road closures.

At the start in Morbegno, the riders at the centre of the protest and the CPA, once more resisted but the stage rolled out before proceedings were halted after 8km, with the riders disappearing onto their team buses. The race was then relocated to Abbiategrasso and the route shortened to a more palatable 124km of racing but the ramifications of the riders’ actions will be felt all the way to Milan with race director Mauro Vegni and several team bosses voicing their displeasure at the riders’ actions. It seems, however, that while Friday’s weather conditions were not bad enough to trigger the UCI’s weather protocol measures, the overall fatigue, stress, incidents involving COVID-19, and ‘bubbles’ became too much.

How it unfolded

Once the stage started hostilities began almost immediately with Victor Campenaerts (NTT), Simon Pellaud (Androni), Josef Cerny (CCC) breaking clear at the start of the rescheduled and relocated stage. The trio built up a 20-second lead on a group containing Iljo Keisse (Deceuninck-QuickStep), Sander Armée (Lotto Soudal), Giovanni Carboni (Bardiani), Nathan Haas (Cofidis), Marco Mathis (Cofidis), Simon Clarke and Lachlan Morton (EF Pro Cycling), Alex Dowsett (Israel Start-Up Nation), Albert Torres (Movistar), Jacopo Mosca (Trek-Segafredo), and Etienne van Empel (Vini Zabu) before the two groups formed into one with 98km remaining.

Back in the peloton only Peter Sagan’s Bora-Hansgrohe team showed intent to chase down the break and they initially held the leaders at 30 seconds but as Sagan’s team ran out of motivation and the gap quickly expanded to over a minute, and with little help from the rest of the sprinters’ teams, the break’s advantage ballooned out to over six minutes with 45km to go.

With 31km to go Campenaerts attacked but he was quickly caught by Dowsett, and Mathis before the rest of the group made contact. Morton was the next rider to try his luck but the terrain and the conditions would always provide a disadvantage for the Australian and when he was caught Campenaerts once more forced a split a few kilometres with Cerny, Clarke, Pellaud, Armée, and Mosca making contact.

Pellaud would be distanced when Campenaerts stamped on the pedals once more but it was Cerny who created the most significant solo move with 22km to go as he opened up a 20-second gap. Keisse added some much-needed firepower to the group of Mosca, Campenaerts, Clarke, and Armée when the Belgian bridged over with 17km to go but the CCC rider put everything into his dash to the line with 40 seconds of an advantage at that point. Keisse could sense the danger and immediately moved to the front of the chase group, almost splitting it through his efforts, and the gap was down to 28 seconds with 9km to go.

The gap began to drop with each passing kilometre and with 4.4km to go Cerny’s advantage had dropped to just 21 seconds with the CCC rider’s shoulders beginning to rock but he held on to take the win and give CCC a welcome boost.