Giro d'Italia: Diego Ulissi takes stage 2

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Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates) gave Italy its second win in a row in the 2020 Giro d'Italia, following up the stage 1 victory by Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) with a powerful uphill triumph in Agrigento on stage 2.

Ulissi played off an acceleration by teammate Valerio Conti to draw out a small group and then out-power Giro debutant Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Mikkel Frølich Honoré (Deceuninck-Quickstep).

"I told Valerio Conti to accelerate to drop the sprinters on the last kilometre, we were perfect, I'm really happy for this extraordinary success,” Ulissi said.

The short, steep climb did not create big enough gaps to dislodge Ganna from the top of the overall standings, with João Almeida (Deceuninck-Quickstep) staying in second at 22 seconds and Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) moving up to third after finishing 11th on the stage, one second further adrift.

"The final climb was very hard and we climbed up very fast," Ganna said as he looked forward to the Mount Etna finish on Monday. "I am happy I retained the Maglia Rosa, it's a very nice feeling. Tomorrow I will work to help Geraint Thomas.”

It was a cagey victory for Ulissi, who surged with Conti under the 1km to go banner, following a move from Luca Wackermann (Vini Zabu KTM). After Wackermann lost contact, Ulissi stopped pedaling, let Honoré take the front and then clicked into another gear and blasted away from the trio.

Sagan had no answer to Ulissi's surge but could be consoled by taking enough points at the finish to move into the lead of the mountains classification after taking two points in the opening stage.

"I think I could have done better, I think if I could have caught them I could have started the sprint," Sagan said. "I had to do a big effort to catch them. After they started to sprint - I did my maximum and Diego was stronger. It was a pretty hard climb - 3.7km - we went from the bottom to the top full gas. 

"I can be happy with second place because it was pretty hard. Strangely I have the mountains jersey. We'll see day by day [about the points jersey]. Today I got some points, tomorrow is going to be hard, then we will see later how it's going."

Ulissi claimed the ciclamino jersey as leader of the points classification, while Ganna remains in the lead of the young riders classification.  Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Soudal) took the lead of the combativity classification from the breakaway while Ineos remain best team.

How it unfolded

The second stage of the postponed 2020 Giro d’Italia got underway with summer weather conditions in Alcamo on the island of Sicily, with the peloton facing a lumpy stage with a tough, uphill finish in Agrigento and its pitches up to nine per cent.

Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) rolled off the start line in the maglia rosa but with little certainty of keeping the jersey, with João Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep), second in the opening time trial wearing the ciclamino jersey and Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates) in white as the best young rider.

Of more interest was the blue jersey of mountains classification leader Rick Zabel (Israel Start-Up Nation). The German sprinter claimed three points atop the category 4 climb by being quickest on the first 1.1km of the time trial.

There was another point to be taken on the Santa Ninfa after 37.5km on stage 2, so Zabel immediately launched an attack after the flag dropped. The move sparked the interest of notable breakaway artist Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Soudal), and while Zabel failed to stick with the attack, De Gendt found four companions willing to flog themselves ahead of the peloton on the 149km stage.

De Gendt, Ben Gastauer (AG2R La Mondiale), Mattia Bais (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec), Alessandro Tonelli (Bardiani-CSF-Faizane) and Etienne Van Empel (Vini Zabù-KTM) quickly forged a gap, even though Van Empel misjudged a bend and crashed. The Dutchman made it back up to the move a little worse for the wear.

De Gendt attacked on the climb to take the three points available ahead of Bais and Van Empel and then again for the intermediate sprint bonus in Partanna 8.5km later.

The leaders enjoyed a gap of five minutes as the peloton fought it out for the remaining points at the Partanna sprint. Groupama-FDJ staged the lead-out for Arnaud Démare, with Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates) getting in the mix, too. Gaviria claimed three points over Demare, while behind there was a crash by a Cofidis rider, Simone Consonni.

As the race hit the halfway point of the short stage, Sunweb sent Nico Denz to the fore to reel in the breakaway for Michael Matthews, and the German’s power shaved over a minute off the gap in just a few kilometres.

Astana tried to call off the chase as Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana) was dropped, but the Russian climbed into the team car, dropping out with stomach issues. It was a tough break for the team, who had to swap out two riders after a pair of COVID-19 cases and the loss of Miguel Angel Lopez to a crash in the first stage, and their leader Jakob Fuglsang who was now left with only five teammates after two stages.

At the front of the peloton, the chase was on, with Bjerg coming to the fore to chase for Gaviria, and Bora-Hansgrohe cooperating in bringing the gap down to a much more manageable minute and change with 30km to go.

The leaders still held onto a minute’s advantage with 20km to go when a crash in the peloton disrupted the chase slightly, that saw Nicolas Edet (Cofidis) having his second fall of the race, going down with Aurelien Paret-Peintre (AG2R La Mondiale) and Brent Bookwalter (Mitchelton-Scott).

The leaders’ gap fell quickly in the next 10km, dropping to 25 seconds with 13km and, even as the five leaders worked together, it continued to plummet. The breakaway came within sight of the peloton at the last intermediate sprint with 11km to go where De Gendt once again led across the line.

With 9km to go, the breakaway was finally swept up as the sprint trains taking up positions across the road. The climb kicked up with just over 4km to go, with Geraint Thomas was present near the front on the wheel of Demare and his Groupama-FDJ train while Simon Yates also made his presence known.

The surge came finally with 1.5km to go as UAE Team Emirates surged for Ulissi into the final kilometre. Luca Wackermann attacked under the kite and was joined by Ulissi and Honoré, who then surged away. Sagan jumped across and stalked Honoré but when Ulissi attacked the Slovakian had no answer and had to settle for second.