Giro d'Italia Stage 8: Breaking Down The Key Points of a Great Stage Win

Breaking down the key points of a great win as the Giro took a detour in Napoli to race a mini one-day classic in the middle of a Grand Tour

Catch Up: Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | Stage 4 | Stage 5 | Stage 6 | Stage 7

---

On a stunning circuit through the Southern Italian port city of Napoli, Thomas De Gendt showed the older generation still has a thing or two to teach the sport’s younger stars when he pulled out a vintage breakaway victory on the endlessly rolling circuit. While he easily beat Davide Gabburo and Jorge Arca for the win, the real victory of the day was how he outfoxed the pre-race favorites Mathieu van der Poel and Biniam Girmay by expertly creating a split in the breakaway that left them on the wrong side and chasing fruitlessly over the final 40-kilometers.

The stage, which started off in the heart of Napoli with a nuclear fast pace due to a bare-knuckle brawl to make it into the early breakaway, featured a B plot GC battle when Guillaume Martin snuck into this early move and gained a three-minute advantage on the other GC contenders. By the end of the day, this had moved him into 4th place overall, but it remains to be seen what toll the effort will take when the contenders face off on the brutal Blockhaus climb tomorrow.

Stage Top Three:
Thomas De Gendt +0
Davide Gabburo +0
Jorge Arcas +0

GC Top Three:
Juan Pedro López +0
Lennard Kämna +38
Rein Taaramäe +58

Filtered Current GC Standings:
Guillaume Martin +0
Simon Yates +36
Wilco Kelderman +49
João Almeida +52
Pello Bilbao +54
Richie Porte +58
Romain Bardet +1’00
Richard Carapaz +1’09
Mikel Landa +1’37
Bauke Mollema +1’37
Tobias Foss +3’08
Tom Dumoulin +4’34

Stage Notebook:

152km-to-go: The race starts incredibly fast due to an intense battle to make the breakaway. Van der Poel smartly gets into the front group that is ripping off the front but then decides to attack alone, which wastes valuable energy.

51.2km: A big breakaway has a 2’20 gap on the peloton. Martin, on the front, is driving the pace in an effort to take the Maglia Rosa and get back into the GC. We also see Van der Poel close to the front while Girmay is sitting near the back on a winding climb.

46.3km: And on a climb soon after, we again see Girmay sitting at the back. Van der Poel (center of the photo) has likely noticed this and is winding up for a massive attack.

46.3km (in motion): He launches a brutal attack and quickly gets a gap.

45.6km: However, while fun and impressive to watch, the surge isn’t enough to create a clean break and he is quickly joined by Mauro Schmid and Girmay. This causes Van der Poel to sit up and start looking around.

42.7km: On the next climb, we see Davide Gabburo from Bardiani ride clear on the opposite side of the road. Van der Poel is sitting on the front with Girmay on his wheel and neither rider makes a move to mark him.

42.1km: This inaction makes sense, but it creates an island for two Lotto riders (De Gendt and Vanhoucke) plus a Movistar rider to bridge up to.

41.8km: When De Gendt makes contact he immediately hits the front and starts driving the pace. While the lead group is close behind, this is the only moment when a bridge is possible, and with no one else coming, this is when the winning move was created.

26.8km: The gap grows out to 40-seconds and we can see that while accelerations in the chase group close it down to under 30-seconds at times, the lack of a true cohesive pace means that they struggle to keep and build upon these gains.

4.5km: Following the final climb and going into a fast descent, the gap is down to 20-seconds. But we can see De Gendt is still pushing the pace and the chase group is only going around 1km-per-hour faster. If they wanted to reel in the leaders on this descent, the gap needed to be 10-seconds by the summit of the climb.

2km: After ripping down the descent, Van der Poel and Girmay are within 9-seconds with 2km remaining, but they won’t be able to make much headway with a flat, straight run to the line.

400m: We can see the chasers dangling at 10-seconds while De Gendt has sent his teammate Vanhoucke to the front to keep the pace high. We see that De Gendt is looking behind which tells us he isn’t concerned about losing the sprint to anyone currently with him.

Finish: We see this confidence is well-placed when he opens up his sprint and immediately creates a winning gap.

Key Takeaways: