Viviani takes fourth win in torrential rain on stage 17 – Giro d’Italia

Giro d’Italia 2018

Stage 17

Italy’s Elia Viviani took his fourth win of the race with a textbook Stage 17 win over Ireland’s Sam Bennett in torrential rain at Iseo to all but secure an overall victory in the maglia ciclamino points classification.

Viviani, 29, profited form an expert lead-out from his Quick-Step Floors team-mates Fabio Sabatini and Zdenek Stybar to confirm his status as the fastest man in the 101st edition of La Corsa Rosa.

In an almighty downpour on the shores of the Lago d’Iseo in northern Italy, Viviani got the better of Bora-Hansgrohe’s Sam Bennett and Italy’s Niccolo Bonifazio (Bahrain Merida) to become the first Italian sprinter Since Alessandro Petacchi in 2005 to win four stages in a single edition of the Giro.

Dutchman Danny van Poppel (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Belgian Jens Debusschere (Lotto Fix All) completed the top five in a scrappy finale at the end of a pulsating 155km stage from Riva del Garda.

An unforgiving pace saw numerous breakaway attempts thwarted and kept the GC riders on red alert for a stressful three hours and twenty minutes as Viviani recovered from being dropped on at least two occasions before showing his class when it mattered most.

Viviani’s tenth win of the season sees the Italian move on to 290 points in the battle for the maglia ciclamino with Bennett trailing on 232 points and only one flat stage remaining: the final-day ride to Rome.

Britain’s Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) negotiated a potential banana skin of a stage to retain his 56-second lead over Dutch defending champion Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) ahead of three key summit finishes in the Alps.

The perfect day for a breakaway or the last chance for a bunch sprint before Rome? In the end, it was the latter – despite all the ingredients, and desire, being there for the former.

Right from the get-go this was a stage brimming with intensity and risk as an early break of a dozen riders formed on the 10km gradual climb up from the banks of the stunning Lake Garda.

Led by Spain’s Samuel Sanchez – who would prove the persistent animator of the day – this group only held a slender lead over the summit, largely owing to the pace being set in pursuit by Bennett’s Bora-Hansgrohe team after Viviani appeared to be in difficulty on the climb.

A larger leading group of 15 riders soon formed featuring Sanchez, his partner in crime Alessandro De Marchi (BMC), Team Sky duo David de la Cruz and Salvatore Puccio, and the blue jersey of Giulio Ciccone (Bardiani-CSF).

But Fabio Aru’s UAE Team Emirates led the chase on the descent, forcing a split in the peloton and seeing the gap come tumbling down. Viviani was one of the riders caught out – as was Britain’s Chris Froome of Team Sky, up to fourth place on GC after a strong performance in Tuesday’s time trial.

There followed another hour of uncertainty as a smaller eight-man group formed after Belgium’s Ben Hermans (Israel Cycling Academy) attacked ahead of the only categorised climb of the day. Once again, Sanchez and De Marchi were involved along with Sky duo Wout Poels and Kenny Elissonde.

Frenchman Alexandre Geniez (Ag2R-La Mondiale) took the points over the summit of the Cat.3 climb to Lodrino as the first rain fell with the peloton closing in.

The peloton in northern Italy today.

Sanchez, De Marchi and Hermans rallied with the pack breathing down their neck, while Poels – having already been caught – had a second wind and managed to bridge back over to the leaders.

Finally, the race appeared to settle down with the four escapees allowed to build up a maximum lead of 1’45” as the peloton regrouped with 50km remaining.

With two Bardiani-CSF riders in pursuit in no-man’s land, Poels picked up three bonus seconds in the intermediate sprint as the gap gradually came down as Bora and LottoNL-Jumbo combined behind.

The leading quartet passed through the finish zone in Iseo with just a 25-second gap as the route looped out on a 24km circuit through the Franciacorta wine region. And with 12km remaining, Sanchez and De Marchi – the last two standings – called it a day.

An attack by Gianluca Brambilla (Trek-Segafredo) in the final 8km was neutralised by Robert Gesink (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Stybar before Dutchman Maurits Lammertink (Katusha-Alpecin) soloed clear on a long-range move with 5km remaining.

But the race had all come back together by the time the riders hit the outskirts of Iseo and the rain started falling like cats and dogs.

Amazingly, no riders fell in the horrendous conditions. Viviani benefitted from some superb marshalling from team-mates Stybar and Sabatini before jumping onto the back wheel of Van Poppel and making light work of a slight headwind to take stage number four and establish a virtually insurmountable lead in the maglia ciclamino standings.

“We know it would be a hard stage after the time trial and the rest day. People had recovered a bit of energy. Everyone wanted to take a breakaway all the way to the finish and it was a really strong four-man break but Bora controlled the chase really well with LottoNL-Jumbo,” said Viviani.

“We played a little bit today but we think we played right. It’s the last sprint stage before Rome and it really suited Bennett. If he won today, he could have come closer to me [in the maglia ciclamino standings] and so we didn’t have to take the responsibility. But when we came to the finish there, we organised a great lead-out and it was perfect – Saba[tini] was great today.”

Ireland’s Bennett, who was looking to level Viviani’s three wins and cut his rival’s lead in the points classification, was distraught at the finish after a missed opportunity.

“I had a few slips and lost the nerve. I had the legs again but I just couldn’t get out. It’s just timing. I was coming from behind and I ran out of road. I put a lot into it,” he said.

The focus now shifts firmly from the purple points jersey to the battle for pink as three days in the Alps force the GC riders to show their hands.

Thursday’s 198km Stage 18 from Abbiategrasso to Prato Nevoso concludes with a brutal 20km climb that will test Yates’s pink jersey credentials to the max. The British rider leads Dumoulin by 56 seconds with Italy’s Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain Merida) at 3’11” and compatriot Froome at 3’50”.

Let the battle commence.

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