9 things we learned from stage 14 of the Giro d’Italia 🇮🇹
Jonas Vingegaard takes pink in Pila as Visma-Lease a Bike tighten their grip on the Giro, and rivals are shown their limits
Hey Subscribers,
After two weeks of racing, stage 14 of the Giro d’Italia felt like another moment of confirmation rather than revelation. Jonas Vingegaard moved into the maglia rosa and tightened his grip on the race with a third mountain stage victory; Visma-Lease a Bike underlined their tactical and physical superiority; and several contenders discovered where the ceiling of their ambitions might lie.
Twitter 🟢 — Instagram 🔴 — Bluesky 🔵
Yet beyond the pink jersey battle, the stage to Pila offered fresh clues about the fight for the podium, the resurgence of Red Bull, and which teams are still searching for redemption before Rome. Here are nine things we learned from stage 14.
Just a reminder, there’s a huge 25% sale on annual subscriptions right now, so for less than £1 a week you can read all the Giro content, race analysis and breaking transfer news. Just click on the link below.
Daniel 🫶
Vingegaard shows rivals their limits 🐝
Three mountain stages, three stage wins and now a comfortable lead in the overall standings. Aside from a slight downshift in the stage 10 time trial, this has been a near-perfect Giro d’Italia for Jonas Vingegaard, who is now just a week away from becoming the eighth male rider to win all three Grand Tours.
On the key stage to Pila, the Dane benefited from having the best team in the race around him, with Visma-Lease a Bike delivering a masterclass that highlighted the gulf between their resources and those of their rivals. The team controlled the stage throughout, and by the time Vingegaard kicked clear with 4.7km to go on the final climb, none of the other GC contenders even tried to follow. There was brief resistance from Felix Gall, but even his unique climbing style couldn’t match the pace of the blue jersey, who by the finish had put 49 seconds into the Decathlon rider and bolstered his advantage over the Austrian to 2:50 in the overall standings.
Vingegaard’s widening of the void to Gall and the rest in the final 4.7km wasn’t explosive or necessarily terminal, but it once more showed that the 29-year-old is the best rider in this race, even though he’s clearly not at 100 per cent. Part of that might stem from the brief illness he had earlier in the race, but it’s far more likely that he’s come into the Giro slightly below his best and has maintained that level in a bid to show his true peak in July. Today, he merely did what he had to do and, thanks to the work of Sepp Kuss and Davide Piganzoli, barely had to get out of third gear.
There was one very brief look in Gall’s direction once the attack was made, but by then the likes of Thymen Arensman and Jai Hindley were already going backwards. The out-of-the-saddle acceleration must have lasted no more than 50m.