Key Takeaways: Giro d'Italia Stage 7

Breaking down how a forty-kilometer time trial turned into what is likely to be one of the most consequential stages of this Giro d'Italia

In Friday’s 40-kilometer time trial course from Foligno to Perugia in central Italy, Tadej Pogačar won Stage 7 of the 2024 Giro d’Italia after a scorching ride that saw him overtake early leader and eventual runner-up Filippo Ganna after an otherworldly performance on the final seven-kilometer long climb to the finish line. The exhibition left the stage’s third-place finisher, young American Magnus Sheffield, as the only other rider to finish within a minute of the sublime benchmark and put two minutes between Pogačr and Geraint Thomas, his biggest GC rival. Pogačar’s ride, which will serve as a response to Jonas Vingegaard’s exhibition at last year’s Tour de France, not only blew open the gap to the rest of the overall classification but also put to bed any notion of the superstar Slovenian not being at his best. At this point, the only remaining question is whether Pogačar will switch into a defensive mode with his looming Tour de France challenge in mind or if he will continue to press his advantage to completely eliminate any lingering hope the rest of the field may still possess.

Stage 7 Top Five:
1) Tadej Pogačar (UAE) +0
2) Filippo Ganna (Ineos) +17
3) Magnus Sheffield (Ineos) +49
4) Thymen Arensman (Ineos) +1’00
5) Maximilian Schachmann (Bora) +1’05

Time Top GC Contenders Gained(+)/Lost(-) On the Stage:
Pogačar +0
Arensman -1’00
Tiberi -1’21
Plapp -1’45
Martínez -1’49
Thomas -2’00
O’Connor -2’07
Lutsenko -2’23
Bardet -2’50
Uijtdebroeks -2’55
Fortunato -3’37
López -4’17

GC Top Ten:
1) Tadej Pogačar (UAE) +0
2) Dani Martínez (Bora) +2’36
3) Geraint Thomas (Ineos) +2’46
4) Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R) +3’33
5) Luke Plapp (Jayco-Alula) +3’42
6) Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan) +3’49
7) Cian Uijtdebroeks (Visma-LAB) +3’50
8) Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain) +4’11
9) Filippo Zanna (Jayco-Alula) +4’41
10) Lorenzo Fortunato (Astana) +4’44

Stage 7 Race Notebook

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Filippo Ganna:
38km-to-go: Ganna rips off the startline and settles into a scorching-fast pace that sees him go through the first two time checks with by far the fastest time on the day.

900 meters: Ganna seems to be undeterred on the uphill final kilometers, with his only obstacle being struggling riders that he has to leave his line to fly by.

Finish: After averaging 430 watts for the final 13-minute climb, Ganna crosses the finish line with an incredibly competitive time.

Geraint Thomas
6.6km-to-go: Coming into the second time check at the base of the final climb, Geraint Thomas is nearly 90 seconds behind Ganna’s mark and is clearly not on a great day.

6km: Due to running a single 66-tooth front chainring, Thomas looks incredibly over-geared on the steep early pitches of the climb, even with his experimental internal shifting hub.

Finish: Thomas comes over the finish line 1’43 behind Ganna after ceding 16 seconds to the much bigger rider.

Tadej Pogačar
34km to go: In the opening sections of the course, Pogačar, in an extremely aero position, almost lazily pedals through the first time check, where he clocks in 10th, already 44 seconds down on Ganna.

7km-to-go: However, coming through the second time check at the base of the final climb, Pogačar has only lost three additional seconds to Ganna, which tells us he has paced the course incredibly well and is likely to put in a great climbing performance.

6.1km: Once on the climb, Pogačar’s cadence is noticeably better than Thomas’ and appears to benefit from the presence of a second, smaller, front chainring.

Finish: Pogačar rolls over the finish line 17 seconds up on Ganna after taking back nearly a minute on the 12-minute final climb. Pogačar is visibly extremely relieved/happy, likely due to finishing 1+ minute ahead of every GC contender and taking a big step toward overall victory.

Key Takeaways

1) Tadej Pogačar Won This Giro d’Italia in Just Forty Short Kilometers: After being allowed back in his race-issued multi-toned leader’s skinsuit, Tadej Pogačar wasted no time decimating his competition, taking a commanding GC lead and silencing any whispers that he looked off his best after the opening weekend.

• Outside of laying the groundwork for an eventual overall victory, this time trial performance, which was head and shoulders above the rest of the field as well as being one of the best of Pogačar’s career, almost appeared to serve as an answer to Jonas Vingegaard’s world-destroying ride on Stage 16 of the 2023 Tour de France.

  • With Pogačar pushing an average of 430 watts for the entirety of the final 6.6km-long climb (12:14), after forty minutes at what must have been just over 400 watts on the flats, it is now clear, if it wasn’t already, that he is the strongest rider in this race and that his UAE trainers have nailed their pre-race preparation and

• The most impressive thing about Pogačar’s ride, and the reason he was able to beat Filippo Ganna despite having a 47-second deficit to the world-class TT specialist with just seven kilometers remaining, was his superb pacing.

  • Team UAE’s internal computer models likely suggested riding negative splits to create the biggest time gaps, but this is easier said than done. However, Pogačar came out and rolled through the opening time check in 10th place, 44-seconds behind Ganna, before settling into a steady pace, clocking the second-fastest time between T1-T2 and only losing three additional seconds, before throwing down the hammer and taking 56-seconds on the final 7km-long climb.

    • Pogačar’s Time Splits Ranking:
      T1: 10th (lost 44 seconds)
      T2: 2nd (lost 3 seconds)
      T3: 1st (gained 56 seconds)

  • While the end result of a 17-second stage win over Ganna and well over a minute to any serious GC contender may make it obvious he had a strong ride, a key date point is that with pre-stage models suggesting Pogačar would be able to pull back up to 50 seconds, he significantly outperformed that mark by 12%.

2) The Time Gaps Between the Rest are Tightening As they Widen to Pogačar: Coming into the stage, it was obvious that one of the longest (by time) Grand Tour time trials in recent years would create significant GC gaps, but with Pogačar and Geraint Thomas underperforming (more on that below), the stage completely overturned the overall standings and, barring a major injury, likely ended any semblance of suspense around the eventual overall winner, but, at the same time, opened up loads of intrigue about the lesser GC placings.

• To put just how significant these time gaps were, the gap between race-leader Pogačar and second-place Dani Martínez (2’36) is greater than the time gap between Martínez and 11th-place Thymen Arensman (2’33), who was considered completely out of the GC race after losing over four minutes to Pogačar in the opening two stages.

  • And, it now appears that the riders placed 2nd-7th in the overall standings are the only remaining serious GC competitors who can realistically challenge for the podium due to the stage testing a rider’s ability to time trial on the flat (which will be important on the second TT on Stage 14) and climb.

    • But, if we look at the time these riders lost on just the final seven kilometers of the stage alone, it becomes clear how much stronger than Pogačar is than the rest, as well as gives us a picture of how well each rider is currently climbing, which will be important with the presence of a summit finish on Saturday’s stage.

      • Time Lost on Final Climb (7km) to Pogačar
        Martínez -32
        O’Connor -35
        Lutsenko -57
        Uijtdebroeks -59

        Plapp -73
        Thomas -80

3) The Best (And Worst) of the Rest: With these time-lose figures in mind, we can sketch out a solid outline of which riders are going well, who will be serious contenders, and who is a paper tiger.

• Dani Martínez: The GC contender behind Pogačar, whom I was most impressed with, now appears to be in the driver’s seat for second place. He put in a great ride to limit his losses to under two minutes, and flew up the final climb quicker than any other non-Pogačar contender.

• Ben O’Connor: After overextending himself on the climb to Oropa back on stage two, the Australian appears to have hit a groove and proved today he is one of the strongest climbers at this race.

• Geraint Thomas: Worse than his two-minute time loss to Pogačar was his failure to shut the door on the gaggle of podium contenders nipping at his heels. Instead of going into the first rest day with a clear hold on a podium place, he now appears caught in a bare-knuckle brawl with a mass of strong riders.

  • More concerning than his missed opportunity to put time into the others is his performance on the final climb. He appeared bogged down and over-geared on his massive 1x setup, sporting a 66-tooth front chainring and finished last among the GC contenders.

• Luke Plapp: The young Australian continued to fly up the overall standings, jumping ten more spots into fifth place with a strong ride through the first two-thirds of the stage. However, I have to wonder if his final climb, where he went slower than every other top contender but Thomas, would have been much better if he hadn’t been in the breakaway the day before.

  • The 37 seconds Plapp gained yesterday may be more than the time he lost today due to the fatigue the effort added to his legs, but with a summit finish looming on Saturday, it seems a risky time for a contender to add hard days of racing to their legs.

4) Ineos’ Tale of Two Days: It was truly a mixed bag of a day for Ineos, who proved they are, without a doubt, the strongest team in the race and that they have a peerless internal time trial preparation process when they put three riders inside the top five.

• Unfortunately for the team, even this incredible teamwide performance was bittersweet since their TT star, Ganna, failed to win the stage, and the rider they wanted to finish closely behind, Thomas, lost time to his GC rivals on a day when he should have been taking it.

  • Even with Arensman putting in a great ride to get back into the GC conversation, his standout performance serves as a reminder of what could have been had he not shipped so much time in the first two days.

  • Additionally, with Arensman moving up the standings and Thomas moving down, Ineos appears to be yet again falling into their now-familiar shapeless ‘Ineos GC glob’ where they have multiple riders inside the top 10 but don’t have the intra-team cohesion to leverage this numerical advantage to press the strongest rider in the race.

    • A more positive spin on this ‘Ineos glob’ phenomenon would be to suggest that Ineos can now use Arensman as a wildcard by sending him into the early breakaway to force Pogačar UAE team to chase and set up a late Thomas attack, but this only works if Thomas is strong enough to attack, and Ineos has shown an aversion to this type of aggressive GC racing in recent years.

      • Also, the fact that so many riders are bunched between Arensman and Pogačar means that even if UAE were unable to pull back Arensman, the teams of the other GC contenders looking to defend their top ten places overall wouldn’t hesitate to come to the front to bail them out.

*All power data provided by Road Code

Stage 8 Preview

Tomorrow’s Stage 8 to the Prati di Tivo ski station in the central Italian Abruzzo region will continue to press the already fatigued legs of the GC contenders with a mountain stage that finishes on a long, 15-kilometer climb at a consistent 7% average gradient. While the GC contenders who are feeling the effects of the fast opening days of racing will likely want to let the breakaway get up the road and contest the stage while they tap away a steady tempo, the riders who performed well today and who want to take back time will want to press riders like Geraint Thomas on the final climb.

• The final climb to Prati di Tivo may look benign due to its steady gradient between 6-8%, but this type of climb can be ridden at an extremely high speed, which means a rider on a bad day can lose a large chunk of time if they lose contact with the group.

• Look for riders who have fallen down the GC standings on the time trial, like Einer Rubio and JP López, to fight to get into the early breakaway to take back time.

• Prediction: Despite Tadej Pogačar’s UAE team setting a hard tempo on the final climb to keep any of Pogačar’s GC rivals from attacking and setting up a short Pogačar burst at the end to take another chunk of time, the early breakaway stays clear.

• BTP’s Stage 8 Bets: Aurelien Paret-Peintre to win at +1600, Einer Rubio to win at +1600