Key Takeaways: Giro d'Italia Stage 3
Key Takeaways: Giro d'Italia Stage 3
Breaking down how what should have been a routine sprint stage descended into chaos, and highlighted how we could be in for an incredibly fun three weeks of non-stop all-out racing
Against the stunningly beautiful backdrop of the rolling hills and vineyards of Piedmont, Tim Merlier narrowly won the opening sprint stage of the 2024 Giro d’Italia ahead of Jonathan Milan and Biniam Girmay through the streets of Fossano. However, a mere cursory glance at the result would obscure the fact that the stage, which started incredibly slowly due to the absence of an early breakaway, was anything but routine. After an elite group of sprinters ripped clear following the hotly-contested mid-stage intermediate sprint, a frantic 40-kilometer chase, where the peloton was split in two, served as a wakeup call for the GC contenders.
As if that wasn’t enough, a completely unexpected attack inside the final few kilometers from Tadej Pogačar, which was smartly and skillfully marked by Geraint Thomas, nearly ripped up any remaining semblance of a script and nearly delivered Pogačar to a second-consecutive stage win, before it was brought to heel by the frantically-chasing peloton behind. Outside of a few bonus seconds picked up earlier in the stage that allowed him to continue to extend his lead, Pogačar may have had nothing concrete to show for his late effort when the dust settled, but it would be unwise to wave it off as a foolish waste of energy since it certainly inserted fear and doubt into the minds of his GC competitors, who will now be looking for attacks around every corner for the remainder of the race.
Stage 3 Top Five:
1) Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step) +0
2) Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) +0
3) Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) +0
4) Jenthe Biermans (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) +0
5) Tobias Lund Andresen (dsm-firmenich PostNL) +0
Points Jersey Standings:
1) Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step) 63pts
2) Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) 63pts
3) Filippo Fiorelli (VF Group - Bardiani CSF - Faizanè) 42pts
GC Top Ten:
1) Tadej Pogačar (UAE) +0
2) Geraint Thomas (Ineos) +46
3) Dani Martínez (Bora) +47
4) Einer Rubio (Movistar) +56
5) Cian Uijtdebroeks (Visma-LAB) +56
6) Lorenzo Fortunato (Astana) +1’07
7) Juan Pedro López (Lidl-Trek) +1’11
8) Jan Hirt (Soudal-QuickStep) +1’13
9) Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan) +1’26
10) Ben O’Connor (Decathlon-AG2R) +1’26
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Stage 3 Race Notebook
BTP is seamlessly following every twist and turn of the 2024 Giro d’Italia with the fantastic Tour Tracker app (iPhone/Android/Web)
87.8km-to-go: With every team and rider passing up the opportunity to form an early breakaway, the peloton rolls along at an absurdly slow speed for the first few hours of the race. However, with maximum points up for grabs at the intermediate sprint, the peloton’s top sprinters begin to ride clear as they jostle for position in preparation for the sprint point (Jonathan Milan would win). Behind, the peloton sits back, assuming the sprinters will return to the fold once their dash is over.
64.2km: However, much to the surprise of the peloton, instead of returning to the fold, the sprinters, in particular Kaden Groves and his three Alpecin teammates, aggressively drive the pace and quickly open up a gap of nearly a minute on the peloton.
59.8km: Soon, teams like Movistar (who have the sprinter Fernando Gaviria) and Polti-Kometa (who can’t throw away a chance to contest a stage due to their limited roster), are chasing extremely hard in an effort to bring back the move. This sudden and violent increase in pace catches out the back half of the peloton, which are distanced due to the formation of echelons.
51.6km: With the Movistar-led chase group within sight of the breakaway, Visma-LAB comes to the front of the third group, which is now 30 seconds behind the second group and a minute behind the front peloton, in an effort to get their GC contender, Cian Uijtdebroeks, back on terms.
45.6km-43.6km: Due to Polti-Komenta putting in a huge amount of work, the Alpecin-led breakaway is finally brought to heel, just as the Visma-led third group makes contact with the peloton.
3.1km-3.4km: After Pogačar and Thomas sprint at a time bonus point (Pogačar takes two and Thomas one), the peloton enters a difficult switchback onto a 1km-long climb. When EF’s Mikkel Frølich Honoré attacks, Pogačar, who is smartly staying at the front, follows him. Thomas, who is at the front but slightly pinned against the wall, jumps after Pogačar a few moments later.
2.9km-1.8km: After a tough bridge, Thomas slots into Pogačar’s slipstream as the race leader rides Honoré off his wheel. Meanwhile, the rest of the GC contenders are caught out and at the risk of losing time for the third consecutive day.
1.5km: With Thomas still tucked into his slipstream, Pogačar continues to power clear of the peloton and is holding a five-second gap over a mixture of frantically chasing teams.
400m: Pogačar, knowing the catch is now imminent, launches his sprint just as the peloton gets the dangerous duo in their sights. Behind, Tim Merlier realizes the Lidl-Trek leadout has burned their matches too early closing down the move, jumps to the other side of the road to latch onto the Tudor leadout for Alberto Dainese.
300m: After Merlier makes the jump, he is slotted comfortably into a protected and perfect position on the wheels of the top sprinters in the race, with room left to launch his sprint to the right of the train. Meanwhile, Milan, whose teammates have pulled off, is completely exposed to the wind on the left-hand side.
Finish: The trees block most of the final few hundred meters from the helicopter shot, but Merlier steps out to the right and comes back Olav Kooij, holds off a surging Binian Girmay, and builds up just enough speed due to his excellent timing to overtake a stalling Milan, who has been in the wind for an extremely long time.
Key Takeaways
1) Tim Merlier Is the King of the Chaotic Sprint: The powerful Belgian sprinter delivered a much-needed victory for his injury-ridden and struggling Soudal-QuickStep team, while racking up his first Grand Tour stage win since the 2021 Tour de France, with a combination of a peerless ability to read positioning dynamics inside the final kilometers and perfect timing.
Outside of his raw physical talent and ability to read a sprint, Merlier was helped by the stage's odd rhythm and chaos in the final few kilometers due to Pogačar’s attack since he is probably the sport’s best ‘messy’ bunch sprinter.
This, along with his bigger frame and reliance on raw power versus overall fitness (like Kaden Groves and Jasper Philipsen) is one of the main reasons why all of his three Grand Tour stage wins have come within the first three stages.
It will be incredibly interesting to watch to see if he can buck this trend by continuing this winning form at this Giro, or if a better-positioned Jonathan Milan will overpower him, or a more versatile Girmay will out-fitness him as the race wears on.
2) Tadej Pogačar & Geraint Thomas Prove Why They Are the Top Two GC Contenders at This Giro: While it seemed reasonable to expect stage hunters like Honoré to attempt to spring clear on the late-stage climb, it was downright shocking to see the race leader fly out of the peloton in an attempt to catch his GC rivals off guard and pad his already impressive lead with a race-winning 10-second time bonus on what was billed as a routine sprint stage. Perhaps even more shocking was the presence of Geraint Thomas on his wheel, which signals just how confident and focused Thomas is right now and why he should be considered the only rider with the racing skills to topple Pogačar at this Giro.
While it would be easy to label this move as pointless and shows a failure of UAE and Pogačar to take the big picture into account, especially since he has tended to struggle late in recent Tours de France, where he has raced incredibly aggressively through the first two weeks, on the flip side, the attack laced what could have been a dull stage with excitement, and, put simply, a sense of fun, all while showing his GC competitors just how much stronger he is.
The last GC superstar I can recall making a move like this on a sprint stage was Chris Froome on Stage 11 of the 2016 Tour de France, when he ripped clear late, and finished in second behind Peter Sagan, but six seconds ahead of the peloton.
At the time, the move, while impressive, was seen as a waste of energy and even somewhat odd, but, it soon proved to be a sign that Froome was simply on incredible form and was looking to strike while the iron was hot, as evidenced by the fact that two days after the attack, he extended his lead over second-place Adam Yates from just a handful of seconds to minutes.
Also, while the move ultimately amounted to nothing, it did test the legs and positioning of his GC rivals and sent a message to them that they should prepare for a tricky stage on Thursday and a critical time trial on Friday.
The fact that the only rider to have the positioning skill, physical ability, and presence of mind to mark the move was the veteran Geraint Thomas isn’t a coincidence and shows why he should be considered the only true contender to Pogačar at this race, while highlighting the Grand Tour inexperience of the rest of the GC contenders, and how they could be vulnerable later in the race.
Additionally, due to time bonuses picked up along the way, Pogačar extended his GC lead over his competitors for the third consecutive day.
It may be tempting to write this off as insignificant, but, as highlighted yesterday, overall competitions tend to be won by seconds, not minutes at the Giro, and, if the rest of the field isn’t careful, they will find themselves over a minute behind Pogačar, all before the first time trial, where Pogačar is likely to further extend his lead.
3) Today Showed Why Potentially Pointless Early Breakaways Are Important: It may be easy for viewers to roll their eyes at the sight of a soft breakaway chugging along a few minutes ahead of the peloton when they tune in to watch a stage what everyone knows will boil down to a sprint, but, today illustrated how these seemingly pointless breakaways are a key part of the Grand Tour ecosystem.
For example, if today’s stage had featured a standard breakaway up the road, the peloton would have had a steady pace that would have held the peloton together heading into the intermediate sprint, while the sprinters who did find themselves slightly in front after their effort would have simply sat up and returned to the peloton since they would have deduced that it was pointless to attempt to close down a multi-minute gap with limited resources.
In essence, the early breakaway deters attacks from the peloton since it almost certainly dooms them to being pointless efforts that will simply strand them in no-man land between the peloton and breakaway (aka chasse patate).
But, with no breakaway going clear early on today’s stage, the fuse was lit, and powder dried to create an explosive situation since it meant that all teams like Alpecin had to do was get a handful of riders up near the front with Kaden Groves before deploying them on the front after the intermediate sprint to immediately create a situation that favored their sprinter over the others.
With Groves being a better small-group, hard-day sprinter than the others, Alpecin was incentivized to attempt to rip a small group off the front before riding an incredibly hard pace to the finish line in an attempt to fatigue and isolate more powerful sprinters like Jonathan Milan and Tim Merlier.
Stage 4 Preview
If the profile of tomorrow’s stage looks familiar, it is because it is a near miniature replica of Milano-Sanremo. With this in mind, don’t expect the mid-stage climb, which tops out 100 kilometers from the finish line, to feature any serious attacks.
However, with yet another small climb looming just before the finish line, don’t be shocked if we see Pogačar attempt to recreate the finale of Milano-Sanremo with yet another late-stage move in an effort to catch out his more inexperienced rivals and continue to extend his lead.
Prediction: Another late Pogačar creates more chaos, but Jonathan Milan manages a chaotic sprint better than he did today to finish ahead of Tim Merlier and Biniam Girmay.