Chris Froome holds off Yates to win on Monte Zoncolan – Giro d’Italia

Giro d’Italia 2018

Stage 14

A British one-two on the fearsome Monte Zoncolan saw Chris Froome reignite his faint Giro d’Italia hopes with a maiden win in Stage 14 while Simon Yates extended his lead over a battling Tom Dumoulin in the fight for pink.

Team Sky’s Froome denied his compatriot Yates of Mitchelton-Scott a third victory in the maglia rosa on the climb billed as the toughest in Europe, crossing the line six seconds clear to move into the top five in the overall standings.

Yates looked set to catch Froome on the final hairpins after the famous tunnels near the summit but had to settle for second place in the 186km stage from San Vito al Tagliamento as he extended his lead to 84 seconds over the defending champion Dumoulin.

Dutchman Dumoulin of Team Sunweb rode the final climb with true grit and trademark composure to limit his loses – perhaps decisively – and take a solid fifth place, 37 seconds down on his big rival Yates.

Italy’s Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain Merida) and Colombia’s Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) came third and fourth, while Frenchman Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) tailed off and took sixth place, five seconds behind Dumoulin.

Pozzovivo moved into third place on the virtual podium at the expense of Pinot while Froome rises to fifth but still trails Yates by 3’10” ahead of Sunday’s summit showdown at Sappada.

It didn’t look pretty but four-time Tour de France champion has managed to salvage something from this Giro – and perhaps even put himself in the window for an unlikely final-week tilt at the title.

Before Froome made his decisive attack in the closing four kilometres of what many saw as the queen stage of the race, a break of seven riders managed to establish a maximum lead of six-and-a-half minutes over the peloton.

After the first of four warm-up climbs before the monster finale, two groups merged on the front of the race as Italians Enrico Barbin (Bardiani-CSF), Francesco Gavazzi (Androni Giocattoli), Matteo Montaguti (Ag2R-La Mondiale), Jacopo Mosca (Wilier Triestina) and Valerio Conti (UAE Team Emirates), Denmark’s Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) and Luxembourg’s Laurent Didier (also Trek-Segafredo) formed the day’s break.

Conti and Montaguti traded KOM scalps while Pedersen, Mosca and then Gavazzi fell by the wayside one by one leaving just four riders out ahead on the penultimate climb of the Sella Valcalda Ravascletto.

Conti and Barbin rode clear ahead of the summit but their gap was just one minute over the pack, which was being driven by the Mitchelton-Scott team of the maglia rosa. That advantage was down to 55 seconds as the riders passed through Ovaru and swung onto the final 10km climb.

A nostalgic early attack by Spanish veteran Igor Anton of Dimension Data – who won on the Zoncolan back in 2011 – was followed by a dig by the Canadian Michael Woods (EF Education First-Drapac) as the remaining escapees were mopped up.

The peloton battles up a climb during today’s challenging stage.

Froome came to the front alongside Sky team-mate Wout Poels as the main pack was whittled down on the 20% slopes of the Zoncolan. Fabio Aru (UAE Team Emirates), Davide Formolo (Bora-Hansgrohe) and the white jersey Richard Carapaz (Movistar) were distanced, while Dumoulin was forced to ride his own tempo as the accelerations came thick and fast.

Moments after swatting aside a fan wearing a giant dinosaur costume, Froome put in his attack with 4.5km remaining taking Yates, Pozzovivo and Lopez with him. A second acceleration saw the 32-year-old Briton ride clear and open up a 10-second gap.

All elbows and knees, while pedalling an astonishingly fast cadence, Froome looked the antithesis to the calm composure of Yates, who rode in pursuit and looked certain to close the gap once he put in an attack of his own.

But Froome held his nerve and kept his pace high – riding past the 100,000 spectators of the natural amphitheatre of the Zoncolan to jump-start his Giro and join the elusive club of riders to have won stages in all three of cycling’s Grand Tours.

After the final stinging ramp, Froome punched the air with both fists with a show of both relief and exaltation, while the impressive Yates came home six seconds later to snare another six bonus seconds.

It’s a really special feeling winning on such a monumental climb especially after such a hard start to this race for me and the team,” said Froome, whose climb time of 39’58” was 55 seconds slower than the record set by Gilberto Simoni in 2007.

“I felt that was the moment to attack – with four kilometres to go – because we had done the recon and my team had done an incredible job to bring me up there, especially Wout [Poels]. But even right to the line, Simon was just behind me and I kept on hearing ‘five seconds, ten seconds, five seconds’. I never knew if he was going to catch me so it was such a relief to get to the final metres and hear that I was going to win the stage.”

Still more than three minutes down on his compatriot in the battle for pink, it remains to be seen if Froome can bring an unlikely Giro win out of the bag. He will be buoyed, perhaps, by the fact that Vincenzo Nibali overturned a far larger gap of almost five minutes in the final three stages of the 2015 edition.

“Unfortunately I’ve lost a lot of time already on the general classification but hopefully I can still come back and keep racing. Simon’s in great form and going extremely well, and Tom isn’t far off either – and the time trial is still to come. There’s still all to race for. I’ll just keep racing and take each day as it comes. We’ve seen before in the Giro d’Italia that the jersey can change shoulders in the last few days, so we just have to keep our hope and keep racing as well as we can.”

Pozzovivo outkicked Lopez for third place before Dumoulin – perhaps the big winner of the day – rallied to fifth place, 37 seconds down. The Dutchman trails Yates by 1’24” in the general classification but has been touted to make up almost double that in Tuesday’s 34.2km individual time trial.

“I expected that from him so it was really no surprise,” Yates said of Dumoulin. “Today wasn’t a bad climb for him – he could just churn that big gear. We’ll see if we can test him tomorrow.”

The 101st edition of La Corsa Rosa continues on Sunday with the 176km Stage 15 from Tolmezzo to Sappada, which includes four categorised climbs ahead of another uphill finish.

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