Thomas de Gendt emerged victorious on stage eight of the Giro d'Italia after Lotto Soudal put on an impressive performance in the day's breakaway. The Belgian team played with their depth, and the Belgian took the win in the final sprint between the group that went clear towards the end.
It was a very tricky day, where putting on a chase would never be an easy task. However, early in the stage it became clear that a sprint would not be possible, as Mathieu van der Poel attacked in the opening kilometers of the stage stirring up a large group to eventually snap the elastic to the peloton and go up the road.
The 21-rider group included names such as Mathieu van der Poel, Biniam Girmay and Andrea Vendrame who were pre-stage favourites. With the win in front, Trek-Segafredo controlled the race behind as Guillaume Martin posed a threat to Juan Pedro López' lead of the race.
Collaboration worked decently until 47 kilometers to go as van der Poel attacked in the front group, only to not be successful and later have a different group counter-attacking. Four kilometers later Thomas de Gendt, Harm Vanhoucke, Davide Gabburo, Jorge Arcas and Simone Ravanelli went up the road and put on a fierce pace that saw the chasing group failing to bridge across.
In all ascents there were moves behind but they were not enough to close the gap, as the four rider group - having seen Ravanelli dropped - went towards the finale to fight for the stage win. The quartet went into the sprint where Thomas de Gendt had the top speed and managed to get a comeback victory, crucial for his career, beating Davide Gabburo and Jorge Arcas in the sprint.
In the peloton Lennard Kämna tested Juan Pedro López in the final hilltop, but the Spaniard had the legs to match, and the peloton ended up arriving 3:33 minutes back mostly compact.
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