The frustration goes on for Lidl-Trek. Jonathan Milan arrived at the Giro d’Italia, his home Grand Tour where he won four stages and two ciclamino jerseys in his first two participations, as the sprinter to beat. He also arrived as the man tasked with leading his team out of the doldrums that they find themselves in. They boast one of the biggest budgets in cycling, made big headline signings like Juan Ayuso and Derek Gee-West to bolster their firepower in the winter, and have promised to become one of the best teams in the sport. Yet this year very little is going right for them. Not at the Giro, and not at many other places.
Milan has had four chances to win a Giro sprint this May, four opportunities to re-establish himself as the race’s fastest man, a title he carried over to the Tour de France last year where he won two stages and the green jersey. But the 25-year-old hasn’t delivered. A crash in the final 200m in Naples scuppered one opportunity, and in the trio of others he has been squarely beaten by Paul Magnier, the Frenchman who has confirmed his ascendancy into the small club of the world’s best sprinters that Milan has been a member of for the past few years alongside Magnier’s Soudal Quick-Step teammate Tim Merlier and Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Jasper Philipsen.
Magnier’s rapid turn of speed has earned him a hat-trick of victories so far, and simultaneously sent a stinging warning to Milan that he must up his game if he is to return to the top of the pile. Jhonatan Narváez had taken the purple points jersey off Magnier, but now that Magnier has regained it, surely he won’t let go of it again. He is the Giro’s new sprint king.
In Pieve di Soligo on stage 18 a bunch sprint wasn’t guaranteed to happen until the final few kilometres, with former race leader Afonso Eulálio among those who went on the attack over the Muro di Ca’ Del Poggio 10km from the finish; Eulálio had earlier crashed and looked to be in a lot of discomfort. Jonas Vingegaard also took to the front, reducing the peloton size considerably.
But a technical, narrow sprint finish did eventuate, and right at the front in the closing few hundred metres was the Quick-Step pair of Jasper Stuyven and Magnier. Edoardo Zambanini, Eulálio’s Bahrain-Victorious teammate, couldn’t find a way to get around Magnier, and Milan, in third, was similarly unable to match Magnier’s speed. Lidl-Trek’s wait for a Giro stage win goes on.
Milan has won at least one stage in every Grand Tour he started before this Giro d'Italia (image: Zac Williams / SWpix.com)
The German team have come close on a number of occasions – Giulio Ciccone has twice finished third and has featured in four breakaways – and Gee-West sits sixth on GC, two places shy of the fourth-place he finished in last year’s Giro. For most other teams, the angst at those series of near-misses would be tempered by the satisfaction that results are still relatively strong, but Lidl-Trek isn’t any other team. Not now they’re not. They’re meant to be a superteam. But they’re not winning like one. Pressure it building inside the team as well as outside. No one affiliated with Lidl-Trek underestimates that this is a mini-crisis.
They have 10 wins this season so far, but the other four teams with similar budgets – UAE Team Emirates-XRG (33), Netcompany Ineos (21), Visma-Lease a Bike (21) and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe (18) – have (almost) double or triple that amount. Milan has recorded six of those wins but none since March’s Tirreno-Adriatico.
You can’t say he’s been unlucky at this Giro, either. He’s been beaten comfortably by a better sprinter. He knows it, too. Immediately after stage 18 he analysed his sprint and was critical of it. “I think it was a bit my fault to take this last corner as a fourth wheel,” he said. I should have stayed nearer [to the front] and behind Magnier.”
The final day in Rome offers Milan – and other sprinters like Dylan Groenewegen of Unibet Rose Rockets who have also been foiled by Magnier – to end the Giro on a high. How much he needs it. How much his team needs it. “The guys did an amazing job and I have to say sorry to them if I didn’t achieve the result that we were looking for,” Milan said. “After a big effort like today they needed this.”
Cover Image: Getty
