Giro D'Italia 2016: Results, Highlights and Standings After Friday's Stage 7
Lotto Soudal’s Andre Greipel became the Giro d’Italia’s most successful German rider in history on Friday after winning his second stage of this year’s edition and his fifth overall, per the event’s official Twitter account.
The expert sprinter survived a tough Stage 7, as the pace was extremely high throughout the day, and main points and standings rival Marcel Kittel of Etixx-Quick-Step suffered a mechanical problem just a few kilometres before the sprint.
Tom Dumoulin of Giant-Alpecin remains the overall leader. Here’s a look at Friday’s results, courtesy of Sky Sports Cycling:
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The current standings:
Stage Highlights
The peloton knew it was in for a rough race, as the stage to Foligno started with an early climb and featured rolling terrain throughout the day. A handful of teams were bound to miss the early break, which meant the tempo in the peloton would remain high.
Once again, Nippo-Vini Fantini failed to send a rider with the early break, and it was the Italian team that sat off the front of the pack for most of the day.
Patrick Gretsch (AG2R-La Mondiale), Stefan Kung (BMC) and Jay McCarthy (Tinkoff) were the first to find a gap, but Nippo never relented, and Damiano Cunego attacked on the climb to defend his lead in the mountain classification.
Lotto Soudal’s Tim Wellens beat him to the top, however, and after his solo effort on Thursday, the small bonus was enough to pass Cunego in the standings.
Dumoulin and most of his team-mates caught the break as part of a group of roughly 50 riders, and with the sprinters sitting further back in the peloton, the race still didn’t settle down. It took another 20 minutes for a serious break to form, by which point many riders had wasted valuable energy.
At the front, Kung kept urging the riders to keep the pace high, but as the break formed so late in the stage, their lead never climbed to where it seemed the break had a chance. Lotto moved to the front of the peloton to ride for Greipel, with the gap dropping swiftly leading up to the final climb.
In the background, Javi Moreno of Movistar suffered a heavy crash, landing hard on his knee and his shoulder. Sport shared this photo, showing just how concerned team officials were for the rider:
The break started the final climb with a lead of less than two minutes, and yet another attack from Cunego, countered by Wellens, doomed the group. Further back, the attacks led to cracks in the peloton, with a handful of sprinters quickly giving up hope of contending for the stage win.
Kittel was the biggest victim, and while he did well to work himself back to the front, a puncture ended his race. Orica-GreenEDGE’s Caleb Ewan tried to surprise Greipel by starting his sprint early, but he couldn’t hold off the German, who used the wheel of Lampre-Merida’s Sacha Modolo to launch himself.
Orica Green-EDGE’s Esteban Chaves, a favourite for the general classification, shockingly lost nine seconds in the chaos, a mental blow going into the mountain stages.
Per Cycling News, pink jersey Dumoulin confirmed the riders struggled on Friday: "It was a pretty hard day, especially at the beginning. Nippo missed the break—like every day—so they then chased it down again. It was really hard and very uncontrollable. After that there was a good break up the road and it was more controllable."
Greipel’s win and Kittel’s mechanical means the Lotto Soudal man is the new points leader. Wellens is the new leader in the mountain classification.
Saturday’s stage to Arezzo could see the GC contenders try their luck on the only major climb of the day, but with a descent and a stretch of flat road lying between the top of the Alpe di Poti and the finish line, fans should’t expect major fireworks.
The top GC contenders will likely save their energy for Sunday’s time trial, one of the most pivotal stages of this year’s Giro.
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