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Giro d'Italia Stage 16: Ciccone wins from break, Nibali attack on Mortirolo sees him move second overall

Queen stage may have missed out the Gavia, but provided plenty of drama

Giulio Cicccone of Trek-Segafedo has won the queen stage of this year’s Giro d’Italia, outsprinting fellow escapee Jan Hirt of Astana to take victory in Ponte di Legno. Behind them, another big day in the overall battle saw Vincenzo Nibali of Bahrain Merida attack on the Mortirolo and move second overall behind Richard Carapaz of Movistar, leap-frogging Primoz Roglic of Jumbo-Visma.

The route of today’s Stage 16 from Lovere was altered at the weekend to miss out the Passo di Gavia, rendered impassable due to snow and the risk of avalanches.

Instead, after the climbs of the Presolana and Croce di Salven, the race diverted from is planned route to tackle the ascent of the Cevo – making its Giro debut – and the Aprica, before the final climb of the day, the fearsome Mortirolo.

The latter was tackled from its most difficult side today, with a maximum gradient of 18 per cent and provided no respite for the riders along its 12-kilometre length, the summit coming 27 kilometres from the finish.

At the front of the race as they headed onto the climb were the last three survivors of a 21-man break – Hirt, Ciccone and Bahrain-Merida’s Damiano Caruso.

Domenico Pozzovivo, working for his Bahrain-Merida team leader Nibali, set the pace at the front of the overall contenders’ group in the early part of the climb.

It didn’t take long for Nibali, seeking his third Giro d’Italia overall win, to launch his attack and his move, following Pozzovivo’s earlier work, blew the GC group apart, with those dropped including Mitchelton-Scott’s Simon Yates and Pavel Sivakov of Team Ineos.

The latter was in the white jersey of best young rider, and it was the British rider who topped that classification earlier in this year's race, Hugh Carthy of EF Education First, who got across to Nibali.

Behind them, the next move in the overall group came from Astana’s Miguel Angel Lopez, who had appeared to be struggling earlier on in the climb, the Colombian’s acceleration causing second-placed overall Roglic to lose contact.

Antonio Nibali, who had been in the breakaway, was able to put in a spell in support of his brother and team-mate and after he had been tailed off, Lopez and the Movistar pair of race leader Carapaz and Mikel Landa eventually managed to bridge the gap.

By now, with two kilometres remaining of the climb, there was torrential rain.

Up ahead of the now five-strong overall contenders group, Ciccone once again picked up maximum points on his way to setting an all-but-unassailable lead in the mountains competition as he led Hirt over the top.

However, he struggled to zip up a rain jacket handed to him by a member of team staff and threw it away as he started the descent, something he would regret later as he suffered in the cold and wet.

Behind them, Roglic and Yates were desperately trying to limit their losses, crossing the summit more than a minute and a half after the Carapaz and Nibali group, but somehow managed to halve that deficit on the descent ahead of the final climb to the finish.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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5 comments

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Yorky-M | 4 years ago
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amazing stage, FREEEEZZZING. still think Primo can eat them in the tt for the win

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Simon_MacMichael replied to Yorky-M | 4 years ago
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mylesrants wrote:

amazing stage, FREEEEZZZING. still think Primo can eat them in the tt for the win

Take a look at what I said on the live blog earlier. As things stand right now, I reckon Roglic is 30-40 seconds behind Carapaz, even with the TT.

My gut feeling is that Nibali will do something spectacular and win a third Giro.

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Simon E replied to Yorky-M | 4 years ago
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mylesrants wrote:

amazing stage, FREEEEZZZING. still think Primo can eat them in the tt for the win

How much time can he gain in 15km? Naff-all. If the gap is the same as it is now then I can't see how he would do it.

TBH I wouldn't be surprised if he falls out of the top 3 between now and Sunday. Tomorrow (Weds) is another 181km with some cat 3 climbs , sprint on Thursday and no real chance of gaining time on Friday unless someone cracks. Then Saturday is 193km with 5,000m of climbing.

Simon_MacMichael wrote:

My gut feeling is that Nibali will do something spectacular and win a third Giro.

It wouldn't be a surprise but I've not seen any signs of weakness in Carapaz yet, who has strong support from possibly the best team in the race.

In fact their team support is so good they're giving it to Roglic too, lending him a bike an' all.  3

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Butty | 4 years ago
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My knuckles/ thighs were clenched even from the safety of my sofa and cup of tea on that downhill.

A brilliant result from Hugh Carthy and a snide move from Nibali just to pip him on the line. I  suppose that was just to show him who was boss.

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kil0ran | 4 years ago
1 like

Great fun to watch - probably bloody horrible to ride in. Great job on the TV coverage too.

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