The German Pascal Ackermann (Team UAE Emirates) won the eleventh stage, the longest, of the 106th Giro d’Italia in a sprint which brought the riders, through 219 kilometers from Camaiore in Tuscany to Tortona in Piedmont in the heart of the lands of the two great champions: Costante Girardengo and Fausto Coppi. To tell the truth, the hamlet celebrated an anniversary dedicated to Xerxes, the unfortunate brother of the heron, whose centenary of his birth is being celebrated this year. The Teutonic took his third success in the Giro, after a four-year fast, ahead of the Friulian Jonathan Milan (Bahrain Victorious), who thus consolidated his leadership in the points classification. In third place was a revived Mark Cavendish (Astana Qazaqstan) who preceded the Danish Mads Pedersen (Trek Segafredo). This is the partial sentence of a day that will remain in memory for other sadder reasons.
A crash involving the main men in the classification 68 kilometers from the finish forced the third in the general classification, the Englishman Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos Grenadiers), third in the standings just 5″ from the pink jersey, to retire , this morning starting from Camaiore. It follows that now the general classification sees the Welshman Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) always in the lead with a very narrow 2” advantage over the Slovenian Primoz Roglic (Jumbo Visma) and with the Portuguese Joao Almeida (Team UAE Emirates) who moved up to third position at 22”.
Today’s stage focused on the attack of six riders: Thomas Champion (Cofidis), Diego Pablo Sevilla (EOLO-Kometa), Filippo Magli (Green Project Bardiani CSF Faizanè), Laurenz Rex (Intermarché Circus Wanty), Alexander Konychev and Veljko Stojnic (Team Corratec Selle Italia). Having set off after five kilometres, the fugitives quickly gained four minutes, a margin which alerted the peloton who, at that point, woke up and kept the situation under control. The group, despite the huge collective slip that cost Geoghegan Hart to retire, has always had the pulse of the stage, completing the engagement with Rex, the most tenacious of the attackers 10 kilometers from the finish.
Tomorrow the twelfth stage will take place, all in Piedmont: a stage with a decidedly interesting route that will take the riders from Bra nel Roero to Rivoli, on the outskirts of Turin. The first part of the planned 179 kilometers will be decidedly demanding, culminating with the ascent to 732 meters of the third category GPM of Pedaggera at kilometer 36. Then follow 100 decidedly easy kilometers which will introduce a finale that is anything but trivial with the climb up to at 1,007 meters of Monte Braida, second category GPM, whose summit will be reached at minus 28 from the finish line. There would ideally be room to recover for those who were delayed on the climbs even if, with the rain forecast for tomorrow, taking excessive risks on the descents could be extremely dangerous.
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