Ineos Grenadiers prove to be "the best of the humans" while Tadej Pogacar surges to a dominant victory

Tadej Pogacar openly declared he wanted to win ahead of the queen stage of this Giro d'Italia, but the gap to breakaway wasn't going under three minutes for a long time. Sounds like a mission impossible? Well, not for the Slovenian who not only caught all the escapees but also dealt a fatal blow to his GC opponents with nearest opponents losing up to three minutes.

Behind the maglia rosa, a battle for second place was in a full speed, with Ineos Grenadiers Thymen Arensman pushing the pace for leader Geraint Thomas. And the Dutchman did his job so well that only third place Daniel Martínez managed to match the speed. In the final meters, Arensman lost some time, but Ineos still showed their strength, albeit they didn't even remotely endanger Pogacar's control over the situation.

"Tadej once again showed that he’s on another level but Geraint and Thymen showed that they are up there with the best of the humans," Ineos sports director Dario Cioni told GCN.

As the situation stands, the battle for overall victory appears to be well over with Tadej Pogacar holding a comfortable lead of 6:41 ahead of Thomas. Third place Martínez is another 15 seconds further. Arensman continues his path of improvement and reduces his gap to less than 20 seconds to fifth place Antonio Tiberi. The two will also likely decided among themselves who takes the White jersey.

"With Geraint we know that he’s a man with a lot of experience and he knows how to manage these repeated efforts on different days. He had a good time trial and gained some time and today he only lost time to Pogačar but there’s only so much we can do against him," was Cioni’s assessment.

"Today was the start of a new Giro, the real climbing Giro," Cioni said. "We’ve had two climbing stages before today but this was one of the longest and hardest climbing stages but there are a few others and for the podium the battle is still open."