Derek Gee-West notices "really good signs" from his legs after a glow-up stage in Switzerland puts him back on the radar

Derek Gee-West's performance in stage 16 of the 2026 Giro d'Italia was among one of the few very pleasant surprises in the GC pack. While other contenders such as Giulio Pellizzari or Ben O'Connor entered the final week of this year's Giro with major losses, the Canadian champion was on top of his game in today's purely Swiss stage as he hung on with the podium conteders to cross the line in a respectable fifth place.

"I’m happy with the legs today. Luckily, I got a bit more cloud cover than I thought because it would have been super, super hot. But I’m really happy with the legs," Gee-West told FloBikes at the finish in Carì.

When Visma domestiques laid down a heavy pace, Gee-West saw the group of favourites ride away, however he never gave up, and later passed Michael Storer, Egan Bernal and Davide Piganzoli to reach a top-5 on the day, only seconds away from second-place Felix Gall.

"They’re super good at punching on the climbs and I just can’t do it," Gee-West said. "With a kilometer to go when I caught them, they were going easy and I knew if I kept going at that pace I'd just get dropped when they kicked again, so I tried to go. Obviously, I didn't go anywhere and then they kicked at the end… But I just have to go on like that."

As two more key mountain tests await riders, anything could happen in the general classification where Gee-West currently sits sixth overall, a minute and a half off fifth Afonso Eulálio whose further downfall in the rankings is widely expected. The podium however is 2:42 away for the Lidl-Trek leader and Thymen Arensman has so far showed no cracks in his armor. Just like the second Felix Gall.

"I mean it’s really good for the confidence that the legs are getting to where they need to be for especially stages 19 and 20 coming up," Gee-West said. "Those are going to be massive, massive days, but these are really good signs."

Regarding whether, and how far can Gee-West move up in what's left of this Giro, he's been rather cautious in his estimates, considering he's so far not shown to be an ounce stronger over the past two weeks than the four men who crossed the finish line earlier than him today.

"We’ll see on stages 19 and 20, because maybe you feel better every day relative to the other guys, but at the same time you feel worse every day because you’re getting deeper into a Grand Tour… It’s really hard to know. It’s a bit of a surprise on every climb as to where I’m going to start to lose the group."

Ideally, for Gee-West, there ought to be another time trial - the Canadian's fine discipline as we saw last Tuesday when he finished fifth, only short of Thymen Arensman among the GC contenders. But in order to sweep the 2026 Giro podium, Gee-West might instead need to remember his 2023 Giro debut when he lit up the races with exciting breakaways and not less than four second places.

Anything less than finishing right behind Jonas Vingegaard may not be enough to turn around the GC situation after all...