Stage 4, Tuesday 12

138 km, low difficulty (50 pts), 5 km sprint zone, 3″ splits

First change: there was a bit of a fight for breaking away today. We can see that the Italian teams have a real know-how about that: there was no Polti and no Bardiani in the first attempts contrarily to the other days, but in the right one (5+1 men) they put 1 rider each.

Stage 5, Wednesday 13

203 km, medium difficulty (25 pts), 3km sprint zone, 1″ splits

There were much more events than I can remember. Heavy rainstorms started just after a few miles, and only stopped a couple of mile before the finish.

The Lidl-Trek team failed its Pink jersey wearer Ciccone who loses the jersey only one day after winning it 😢

Crash-wise, we had at least:

• Rondel (🇫🇷 Tudor) smashing UAE’s car rear window, without apparent dommage for the rider 😱
• a Bardiani (?) jumping over a wall and falling into the woods, without hurting himself or damaging his bike 🧐
• Arrieta (🇪🇸 UAE) crashing while he led the front duo,
• and Eulalio (🇵🇹 Bahrain) crashing a few miles later in a similar manner, allowing Arrieta🇪🇸 to catch him up!

Those two guys were exhausted and a bit hurt, so it was a combat of snails in the last two miles (which allowed the Spaniard to make up for having also taken a wrong direction after a curve).

Stage 6, Thursday 14

141 km, no difficulty (50 pts), 5 km sprint zone, 3″ splits

After the long stage on Wedneday, this is again a short one, purely for sprinters, that arrives in Napoli.

Summary: your typical pure sprinters stage: not a single bit of racing, and a mass crash.

And when I say ‘no racing’, I am not kidding: this stage was ridden 5 and 7 km/h slower than the first two stages of the Tour of Hungary (where I was surprised to also see quite some interesting action today).

Unibet lead the peloton in the final miles in a very dangerous manner. It serves them right that they crashed.

Magnier (🇫🇷 Soudal-QS) was stopped by this crash just 500 m from the line, restarted behind many other riders, and yet managed to finish 3^rd^! 😲

Stage 7, Friday 15

244 km, high difficulty (15 pts), no sprint zone, 1″ splits

Summary: no racing for 5½ hours, and a final climb that went more or less as expected.

The organiser has setup everything to stimulate both breakaways and attacks over what should have been a tappone, but the riders didn’t use anything.

J. Milan (🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek) left at km 0 (after yesterday’s sprint, he needed Cyclamen points). After a few seconds, he was joined by 3 riders, including the Blue jersey wearer Sevilla (🇪🇸 Polti). 1 extra joined a bit later. And that was it: no fight, no chase. FDJ and Unibet didn’t bother, they have too good GC leaders for that 🙄

Nobody tried anything in the little humps placed on the course in case a breakaway had not succeeded to form. Nobody tried anything in the 2^nd^ category climb or the hills after it. The stage turned into a simple one-climb race, with a slower-than-expected average speed before that last climb, the record of which was then beaten.

In that final climb, there weren’t many surprises, the expected weakest riders dropped, the expected good riders were at the front, Vingegaard (🇩🇰 Visma) did what was expected where it was expected.

If we sum up the surprises:

• the main one was that O’Connor (🇦🇺 Jayco) did well, much better than what he has showed so far;
• a less important one is that Gall (🇦🇹 Decathlon) was very close to Vingegaard🇩🇰 and, conversely, that the Dane couldn’t make a significant difference over him;
• minor ones were Pellizzari (🇮🇹 Bora) blowing up a bit, and Rondel (🇫🇷 Tudor) doing well.

Hindley (🇦🇺 Bora) sprinted in front of his teammate Pellizzari🇮🇹 and deprived him of the time bonus, in pure New Bora style.

Despite Sevilla🇪🇸 going in the breakaway again and scoring the 18 points of the 2^nd^ category climb again, as it was the only climb with points before the end, and there were 50 bloody points awarded on the finish line, he loses the Blue jersey to Vingegaard🇩🇰. For 1 point…

Nevertheless, he also scored points for the I.S. classification, for the RB classification, and the Fuga classification with already 721 km of breakaway! It wasn’t all for nothing.

Eulalio (🇵🇹 Bahrain) keeps the Pink jersey with a still significant margin of more than 3 minutes. He lost about 3 minutes today; as he hanged to the top guys as long as he could, he lost time quickly when he dropped, but then kind of stabilised (as, ahead, Vingegaard🇩🇰 was perhaps paying his efforts too) and he lost a bit more in the end again.

Stage 8, Saturday 16

256 km, medium difficulty (25 pts), no sprint zone, 1″ splits

A short costal stage for punchers, with all climbs packed inside the last 60 km, long after a start with a few turns and false-flats to help a breakaway to form.

A usual case of, after a day where nobody wanted to break away, everybody wanting to break away and neutralising each other, so that the breakaway never comes. Well, it came but the hills were already near, it was only made of a few strong men as all others killed each other for 80 km, and the big chase group never managed to catch them because all nobody wanted to pull (despite having teammates in the group) and preferred to attack each other.

Stage 9, Sunday 17

184 km, high difficulty (15 pts), no sprint zone, 1″ splits

So, this was another day where everyone wanted to be in the breakaway, and on top of this, Decathlon wanted to win from the peloton.

Ciccone (🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek) had made so clear that he wanted to win the stage through a breakaway, that all his attempts were cancelled by others, and he wasn’t in the breakaway that ultimately developed. But as a one-plan man/team, he tried again later in a climb at km 110 to jump from the peloton to the breakaway which was 2 minutes away. I thought that several strange things were happening:

Anyway, Ciccone🇮🇹 joined the breakaway and was brought into good position in the final climb, but of course he paid the sum of his efforts in the beginning of the stage, and in the chase. This was too much to beat the peloton which had always been kept at 2–2½ minutes by Decathlon.

Pellizari (🇮🇹 Bora), the GC favourite after Vingegaard (🇩🇰 Visma) was dropped early; he is a bit sick. So Hindley surely becomes the team’s leader.

A good surprise was the Pink jersey’s Eulalio (🇵🇹 Barhain) performance. While he seemed to be struggling at first, he made a really good finish. Gee also was better. The shorter final climb was probably better for those guys with punchier capacities, than the long Blockhaus.

first good stage!

bernal, :( i thought this was going to be his glorious return to GC racing