Giro d'Italia: Egan Bernal survives as Simon Yates wins stage 19

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Simon Yates (Team BikeExchange) took a gripping and tense victory on stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia to win at the summit of Alpe di Mera and gain yet more time on race leader Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers).

Yates attacked with 6.4km to go on the final climb, and then again a kilometre later, to win ahead of João Almeida by 11 seconds as Bernal limited his losses to 28 seconds to the British climber with two stages to go.

Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious) who started the day in second overall was dropped by both Yates and Bernal but remains in second place, 2:29 down on the race leader with Yates just twenty seconds further adrift.

It was Almeida who kicked off the hostilities with just under 67km to go after his team had set a blistering pace on the lower slopes of the final ascent but Ineos and Bernal allowed the rider to gain a handful of seconds before Yates attacked less than 400m later. Bernal, who cracked and lost close to a minute on stage 17, used his team perfectly as his climbing domestiques, and most notably Daniel Martinez, paced the maglia rosa on the higher slopes.

After Yates had built up a 30-second lead, it looked as though Bernal’s jersey was in serious threat and that his back problems that plagued him in 2020 were resurfacing at just the wrong time. However, the Colombian remained resolute. He didn’t follow when Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana Premier Tech), Caruso, Almeida, George Bennett (Jumbo Visma) attacked almost at once and when Ineos brought everyone bar Yates back to within touching distance it was Jonathan Castroviejo and Martinez, who began to whittle down Bernal’s rivals with Dan Martin, Romain Bardet and Hugh Carthy all put to the sword.

When Martinez eventually sat up, leaving just Bernal, Caruso and Almeida chasing Yates, it looked as though the race leader would once more face a barrage of attacks but instead it was the maglia rosa who stamped on the pedals with Caruso quickly distanced.

Bernal and Almeida, who started the day well out of contention in the overall standings, chipped away at Yates’ lead and with 2km to go the gap was down to 15 seconds. However, the British rider hung on.

In the last few hundred metres, Almeida finally accelerated away to take second, and while this was far from the vintage Bernal we saw in the first two weeks of the race he certainly did enough to stem the loss of time many expected from him after he dramatically cracked on stage 17. 

Stage 20 provides one final and certainly much harder test in the mountains ahead of Sunday’s final time trial, but with Yates in such an aggressive mode, this year’s Giro d’Italia is far from over.

How it unfolded

The pattern with so many of this year’s Giro d’Italia stages was repeated on stage 19 with another non-stop opening hour of racing before the day’s break finally formed. Larry Warbasse (AG2R Citroën), Mark Christian (Eolo-Kometa), Giovanni Aleotti (Bora-Hansrohe), Andrea Pasqualon (Intermarché-Wanty Gobert), Nicola Venchiarutti (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec), and Quinten Hermans (Alpecin-Fenix) were finally allowed to move clear after 46km of racing but it didn’t take long before BikeExchange muscled their way to the front to raise the pace.

The six leaders were only allowed three minutes of an advantage by the time they crested the climb of the Alpe Agogna before Deceuninck-QuickStep – smarting from the fact that they had lost Remco Evenepoel and were close to finishing another Giro d’Italia without a stage win – began to set a furious pace through Iljo Keisse and Frølich Honore. With 65km to go the gap to the leading six stood at 2:53 but the pace from Almeida’s team had caught Ineos off guard with Martinez distanced and forced to chase. The situation was so drastic that Filippo Ganna was called back to help the Colombian return to the maglia rosa group.

A crash then took out Gianluca Brambilla but there was no let up in pace with the break brought back to within touching distance on the climb of the Passo della Colma.

Here BikeExchange upped the ante with Nieve posted to the front as the maglia rosa group lined out behind. Deceuninck took over for a final time at the foot of the final climb with Christian the last man standing from the break.

By this point the peloton had been reduced to less than 40 riders and it was Almeida who fired the first shot after James Knox had set a relentless pace at the start of the climb. The British rider pulled over with just under 7km remaining and Almeida, who looks even stronger than last year at this point, quickly forced Ineos into a reaction.

Yates was the first rider to bridge over before Caruso, Vlasov, Bennett formed a five-man assault. At that point Bernal looked to be in serious trouble. A week ago he would have skipped across the gap in no time at all, or even forced it himself, but this time he played a more conservative card and allowed the depth of his team to lead the chase. Sometimes, knowing how to not lose is just as important as knowing how to win.

That proved to be true when all but Yates were caught and Bennett, Dan Martin, Bardet and Tobias Foss all slipped back but even when Bernal was finally isolated with under 3km to go he looked just about in control of the situation. He ended the day extending his lead over Caruso by a few seconds and dropping all but two riders to finish third. 

However, stage 20 is a far most testing affair, and while his team look untouchable, the maglia rosa is still far from the rider we saw escaping on the Passo Giau when overall victory looked all but guaranteed.