Primož Roglič may be back in the maglia rosa but it wasn’t the way Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe would have wanted stage eight of the Giro d’Italia to play out. The favourite for the stage had his team pace for most of the day, catching the day’s breakaway only to be beaten by his principal rival Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) to the summit finish at Tagliacozzo.
If you were to just look at the stage results, it would look like a simple summit finish where the best rider won on the day — Ayuso did to Roglič what Roglič has done to others so many times in the past half-decade on these kinds of finishes, winding up a long-range kick and blasting everyone off his wheel. Ayuso may well go on to win this Giro but we already knew he was capable of doing so. But this stage wasn’t the one which provided this conclusion. Rather it brought up more questions than answers. Why did Red Bull pace all day for Roglič to be out of position on the climb? Was the Slovenian caught napping? Did he want to be in the pink jersey at the end of the day?
To the TV cameras at the finish, the rider himself was his usual dry, nonchalant self. Was it a hard finish to the stage? “I was a bit behind. I didn’t really fight much,” smiled Roglič. A strange reaction to a strange stage. For the past few seasons, we have got so used to seeing a lone GC rider — or perhaps two riders (Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard) — in the final few kilometres of Grand Tour summit finish, today was an unusual site to see a large group passing under the flamme rouge together to contest the victory. It’s usually so simple; you do everything you can to not lose time to your opponents.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe pacing the peloton on stage eight of the Giro (Image: RCS)
Despite the four seconds on the road he conceded to Ayuso, Roglič was clearly on good form today — coming from so far back to still be in the top five on the stage shows that the form he exhibited on time trial on stage hasn’t gone anywhere. Could it be that he simply wasn’t in the right position and then missed the opportunity to jump on Ayuso’s wheel? If so, has the loss of Jai Hindley already shown signs of affecting Roglič’s maglia rosa bid?
He did thank his team for their work on the stage and said: “It was a good result. I am happy”. It certainly wasn’t a bad result but a “good result” would be overegging it, especially after all the work they did all day. But, that said, at the end of the stage, he is still in the hot seat for the overall victory and will don the pink jersey for the second time in this Giro. For how long? At the finish, Roglič was non-committal on how long he would want to hold onto it — an unsurprising reaction after a stage which kept us all guessing about what was going on.
There were questions even about the best team of the day, UAE who in Ayuso and Isaac del Toro finished first and second and played a tactical blinder in not having to work on the front throughout the stage but still coming out on top. At the start of the day they had four riders in the top 12 on GC: Ayuso, Del Toro, Brandon McNulty, and Adam Yates and although the British rider slipped a bit today, it was clear they are all trying to stay up there for as long as possible. Whenever a team adopts a multi-leader strategy, they usually commit to the notion that the ‘road will decide’ who will be the protected rider. If the road was meant to make a decisive decision today, it failed to do so.
Ayuso and Del Toro after finishing first and second on stage eight (Image: RCS)
Juan Ayuso, who took the spoils today, has, in his short career to date, had to play second, third, or even fourth fiddle in a fiercely competitive team which features one of the greatest of all time, Pogačar, João Almeida and Yates too. This Giro seems to be his time to shine, so how does he feel about the multi-leader strategy? He was the best rider on stage seven and the result leaves the team in a good place. They stamped their authority on the race without having to work all day, which was done by Red Bull. They are also in the perfect position of being close to the leader’s jersey but are not actually leading the race and therefore avoid all the stress, responsibility and media obligations — although Ayuso is, of course, in the young rider’s jersey. Despite all this, they will have to be careful with the way the next week plays out — particularly Sunday’s gravel stage, which may present all kinds of issues if one of their GC men comes into difficulties.
While there were some talking points and intriguing tactical blunders by Red Bull and masterclasses by UAE, the first summit finish of the Giro d’Italia hasn’t got us any closer to knowing who will win the bike race. But that makes it all the more interesting.
