"It wasn’t up to us to make the difference" - Jonas Vingegaard keeps his powder dry on explosive Giro finale

After making the difference on Blockhaus, Jonas Vingegaard was assured that he had the form to comfortably keep control of the Giro d'Italia. On stage 8, a stage with plenty steep climbs and narrow roads, Team Visma | Lease a Bike worked to keep everything under control, but looked to keep their leader safe and without unnecessary energy being spent.

A finale for the puncheurs favoured the classics riders whilst the breakaway was strongly predicted to be victorious beforehand, but nevertheless Visma had a few men help Bahrain - Victorious control the breakaways at the start of the stage. So much so that when the peloton split the team had someone in front, but the rest were behind the cut with including Vingegaard. That was quickly fixed without too much hassle, whilst towards the end of the day the Dutch team spent a lot of time at the head of the peloton keeping themselves well positioned.

“I don’t know if I rode as if I am the Giro leader. We just raced the way we wanted to race and we wanted to stay safe;" Vingegaard said in a post-race interview.

There were no intentions to attack the race today, instead leaving such instances to the mountains - such as tomorrow's summit finish at Corno alle Scale. "Today it wasn’t up to us to make the difference. There are still many days to come.”

In the final kilometer, Vingegaard accelerated to close down an attack from pink jersey Afonso Eulálio himself, who put on a stellar show in the summit finish to Fermo, leading the GC group up the final minutes of the stahe.

“That was no surprise. He is a strong rider, certainly on shorter climbs like this one. He did well today," the Dane said of the current race leader. "He gets to wear the pink jersey for another day.”

In the end Jai Hindley put on a strong sprint at the front of the group, only followed by Vingegaard. Whilst it won't matter much in the long term, he did end up gaining two seconds on the likes of Eulálio, Felix Gall and Giulio Pellizzari.

Asked if he was going to take the pink jersey this Sunday, Vingegaard responded: “That is a good question. We will see tomorrow.” The summit finish to Corno Alle Scale features quite some climbing, and the final 3 kilometera average 10%. However, as a whole, most of the stage is pan-flat, with it being hard for Visma to fatigue its rivals beforehand.