Giro d'Italia: Landa wins second stage in Aprica

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Mikel Landa (Astana) rode himself into second place overall on stage 16 to Aprica after an epic day of racing at the Giro d’Italia. With his team leader Fabio Aru already dropped, Landa attacked with four kilometres remaining to take his second stage victory of the race. Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo) out-sprinted Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) to take second. Aru eventually crossed the line 2:49 back on his teammate.

Contador now leads Landa by 4:02, with Aru in third 4:52 behind.

“It was a really beautiful day for me, maybe even more than the last one,” said Landa.

“We saw that Contador had a problem and Katusha rode the group full gas and we collaborated with them. On the Mortirolo, Fabio didn’t feel very good and he told me to go with Alberto and Kruijswijk. In the last kilometres I saw that they were playing a little bit for winning the stage. I tried and I didn’t know I was so strong.”

The day had been labelled as a defining one for the general classification and it proved to be just that. At one stage it looked like Aru had Contador on the ropes when the maglia rosa suffered a puncture on the first descent of the Aprica. Katusha drove on with some assistance from Astana, and forced Contador to mount what later became a solo chase with the gap extending to nearly a minute at the foot of the Mortirolo.

After a monumental effort to bridge the gap, Contador finally made contact with a leading group that contained Landa, Aru and Kruijswijk.

Aru, who had already been struggling, capitulated almost immediately, with Contador attacking as soon as he caught the leaders. Landa hesitated briefly before he was given the go ahead to follow Contador and leave his Aru to make his own way home.

The battle for the stage honours had come down to just three men by the top of the Mortirolo, with Kruijswijk proving a match for the two Spaniards. The Dutchman and Contador worked perfectly together to keep Aru at bay - with Landa sitting on - but with less than five kilometres remaining of the final ascent to Aprica, they began playing cat and mouse. Kruijswijk was the first to make his move, with Landa counter-attacking as soon as the Dutchman was caught. The gap quickly jumped to over 30 seconds and neither Contador nor Kruijswijk could react.

How it happened

After taking it easy on the second rest day of the race, the Giro reared up on stage 16 as it took the peloton over the Mortirolo. Once again, the weather would be a factor with intermittent rain and cold conditions. With the road going up the Campo Carlo Magno immediately, many riders chose to warm up on the rollers before they took the start.

There were attacks from the word go, but It wasn’t until the descent that a serious break got free with Edoardo Zardini (Bardiani CSF), Franco Pellizotti (Androni Giocattoli), Fabio Felline (Trek Factory Racing), Brent Bookwalter (BMC), David De La Cruz (Etixx-QuickStep), Ruben Fernandez (Movistar), Nikolay Mihaylov (CCC Sprandi), Ryder Hesjedal (Cannondale-Garmin) and Przemyslaw Niemiec (Lampre-Merida).

Separate chases from Sander Armée (Lotto Soudal) and Simon Clarke (Orica-GreenEdge) saw the escape group grow. After 80 kilometres completed though, the breakaway only had two minutes to show for their efforts. As the riders approached Aprica for the first time the gap was coming down quickly and Hesjedal decided that he had enough. He quickly distanced his former break companions, building an advantage of up to two minutes.

Using every ounce of his mountain biking skills, Hesjedal charged down the Aprica descent. Considering what was to come, it was surprisingly this twisting descent that caused the first real excitement of the day. While the cameras were distracted by the crash of Astana’s Diego Rosa, race leader Contador found himself in trouble. The maglia rosa appeared to suffer a mechanical problem just as the peloton was breaking into small splinter groups.

Aru would have hardly believed his luck as Contador found himself almost a minute behind by the time he reached the valley, with only a single teammate to help the chase. The Kazakh team reached a brief accord with Katusha to work together and try to get rid of the race leader once and for all. Contador soon found himself having to chase by himself with a small helping hand from Movistar’s Igor Anton on the Mortirolo to bring him within 30 seconds of Aru.

Contador hopped from group to group, constantly closing in on Aru and his teammate Landa. Continuing his great comeback, Kruijswijk kept the pace of the Astana pair and even attacked but to no avail. With 40 kilometres to go, Contador emerged around one of the many turns that litter the Mortirolo and he could see Aru just metres ahead. A last little spurt brought Contador back to this three-man group, and the tables were about to turn.

After perhaps believing that he’d got his Giro challenge back on track, Aru was quickly going backwards. With a podium place up for grabs, Landa didn’t wait for his team leader and followed Contador and Kruijswijk up the road. Aru fleetingly had Yuri Trofimov (Katusha) for company but the Italian struck a lonely figure amongst the crowds of the Mortirolo. By the time he’d reached the top, he had been passed by Andrey Amador (Movistar) and the gap had ballooned to almost two minutes.

Not content with the damage he’d already done, Contador pushed on the descent eager to put the Giro out of reach of the Sardinian. Aru followed suit, taking back Amador as he scythed down the tree-lined road. Just to make the tricky descent a little more challenging, the riders had to contend with a drying – but not quite dry - road.

A mechanical problem saw all of Aru’s efforts on the descent go to naught. The bike change was quick enough but he would have to waste yet more energy, with one climb still to come. Aru wrestled with the bike as he chased on, and had a group containing Hesjedal, Amador and Trofimov in his sights before dropping back again.

On the second ascent of the Aprica, Contador, Kruijswijk and Landa pushed the gap out further, with Kruijswijk doing almost all of the work. Landa spent as little time on the front of the group as possible, hoping to allow his leader to minimise the damage. However, Aru could almost see his podium disappearing altogether as the second group on the road, which contained Amador, slipped further into the distance.

With less than five kilometres remaining, the leading group turned their focus to the stage victory. Kruijswijk jumped off the front with 4.3km to go, but was brought back almost immediately by Landa. The Astana rider didn’t stop there and instantly launched his own attack off the front. The result was emphatic as he quickly pulled out a gap on his two companions. Landa had plenty of time to celebrate becoming the first rider at this year’s Giro to win two stages, while Contador and Kruijswijk battled it out for the runner’s up spot.

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