Richard Carapaz climbs to stage eight win – Giro d’Italia
Giro d’Italia 2018
Stage 8
Ecuador’s Richard Carapaz pulled off an audacious move to win Stage 8 of the Giro d’Italia in the rain at Montevergine as Britain’s Chris Froome recovered from a bizarre uphill crash on a slippery bend on the final climb.
Movistar youngster Carapaz became the first rider from Ecuador to win a stage of a Grand Tour after dancing clear of the main field inside the final two kilometres of the 209km stage from Praia a Mare in south-west Italy.
Carapaz, 24, consolidated his lead in the white jersey youth standings and rocketed into the top 10 on GC and above ninth-place Froome, who survived a huge scare without conceding any time to his rivals.
Losing his front wheel on one of the stacked hairpin bends of the winding climb to the Santuario di Montevergine, Froome fell onto the same side he bashed during that training incident in Jerusalem ahead of the race’s opening time trial in Israel.
Froome was paced back to the peloton by his Sky team-mates, who promptly moved to the front to control the race situation, but looked out of sorts and on the rivet as he struggled with the inevitable attacks in the closing kilometres.
As the remnants of the day’s break were picked off one by one, Carapaz made his move with a resounding attack to pass lone leader Koen Bouwman under the kilometre-to-go banner before sealing the biggest win of his career.
Italy’s Davide Formolo (Bora-Hansgrohe) took second place seven seconds behind Carapaz and just ahead of Frenchman Thibaut Pinot of Groupama-FDJ. Pinot’s four bonus seconds for his third place saw him leap-frog Italy’s Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain Merida) into fourth place on GC.
Britain’s Simon Yates retained the pink jersey on the first of two back-to-back summit finishes over the weekend. The Mitchelton-Scott rider is 16 seconds ahead of Dutch defending champion Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) and a further 10 seconds clear of team-mate Esteban Chaves of Colombia.
“Maybe I would have liked to take some bonus seconds in the final,” Yates said, “but I got a little boxed in and I couldn’t get out to sprint. It’s one of those things.”
The blonde-haired Bouwman was part of a seven-man break that was instigated by the Belgian Tosh van der Sande (Lotto-Fix All) after an aggressive opening to the stage.
Italians Davide Villella (Astana) and Matteo Montaguti (Ag2R-La Mondiale), Slovenian duo Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Merida) and Jan Polanc (UAE Team Emirates), and the Colombian Rodolfo Torres (Androni-Giocattoli) completed the break as the race hugged the sunny Calabrian coast en route to the hills of Campania.
Over largely flat roads, the maximum advantage of the break grew to seven minutes as the Mitchelton-Scott team of race leader Yates seemed content to keep a steady tempo on the front of the peloton.
But once the race headed inland at Salerno and the rain started to fall, so too did the gap – and ahead of the final 17km climb to Montevergine the leaders had less than two minutes to play with.
Montaguti, Mohoric, Polanc and Bouwman soon formed a quartet out ahead as Van der Sande, Torres and Villella all faded on the five percent gradients of the decisive climb.
It was Mitchelton-Scott’s Jack Haig who drove pace for his leaders Yates and Chaves as the gap dropped below the minute mark. And then the drama started with Froome skidding on a wet corner with just over 5km remaining.
Froome’s team-mates Wout Poels, David de la Cruz, Kenny Ellisonde and Sergio Henao all dropped back to nurse their man back into the pack. But the beleaguered four-time Tour de France champion looked completely out of sorts.
Not exactly the best bike-handler at the best of times, Froome took each of the corners excessively gingerly and at one point barged into New Zealand’s George Bennett (LottoNL-Jumbo) while looking down at his stem, his feat pedalling in a crazed, frantic cadence.
Meanwhile, Dutch youngster Bouwman attacked the leading group 4km from the summit once their lead had dropped to a precarious 20 seconds. Mohoric, Poland and finally Montaguti were caught by the pack, which was being led by Team Sky – more to protect their faltering leader than to set him up for any ostensible attack.
With the finish in sight, Carapaz spotted his opportunity and set off in pursuit of Alexandre Geniez of Ag2R-La Mondiale after the Frenchman had made the first move from the main pack.
Geniez surged past a cooked Bouwman with one kilometre remaining – and Ecuador’s first ever Grand Tour stage win never looked in doubt.
“I’m very happy because I worked a lot before the Giro. Of course having the first Grand Tour win is emotional,” said Carapaz, winner of the Vuelta Asturias in April.
“I had good legs so I decided to attack from far out with two kilometres to go. I decided it was the right time to go alone because I knew I couldn’t win in a sprint.”
In the wake of Carapaz’s victorious move, Froome weathered a number of attacks as his rivals smelled blood. The 32-year-old finished with his knee and elbow cut and his face a picture of pain – but with his Giro-Tour double dream still intact, however unlikely that may seem now.
Carapaz moved above Froome into eighth place in the overall standings as Italy’s Fabio Aru (UAE Team Emirates) dropped out of the top 10.
Otherwise, it was a day of attrition in the fight for pink which will be notched up a level or two on Sunday’s all-important summit showdown on the Grand Sasso d’Italia – used for the first time since Marco Pantani’s famous win back in 1998.
