"Jonas, he's just doing his thing" - Felix Gall denied yet another stage win by pink jersey Vingegaard

Felix Gall has now finished second at Blockhaus, Corno alle Scale, Pila and Carì. If it weren't for Jonas Vingegaard and Team Visma | Lease a Bike, the Austrian rider could've been having a generation Giro d'Italia; however he is forced to settle for second place a fourth time as the riders reached the final week of this year's Giro.

The stage was short and explosive, although it had 3000 meters of climbing and a consistently high pace all day. The Decathlon CMA CGM Team rider and his team could benefit from Visma's work all day long, but the final ascent to Carì averaged over 8% with more than 11 kilometers in distance and allowed for very little tactics.

Visma masterfully led Jonas Vingegaard out with a brutal leadout finished off by Davide Piganzoli, and the Dane attacked with over 6 kilometers to go. As has been the case in every other mountain stage, Gall was first to respond - and the only one. However shortly after the acceleration he quickly realized that it was not possible to follow the pink jersey; nor to stay away from his direct rivals.

“I thought I could do the same as the last hard stages, just do my own pace, but yeah, that was not possible today,” Gall shared with CyclingPro.net. “Then I saw that Thymen [Arensman] still had [Egan] Bernal to help him, and I knew about the flat part, and then I thought it would make more sense to wait for them.”

Gall was provisionally in second place after Afonso Eulálio had been dropped from the GC group, and the fight for second place truly set it. The Austrian's gap over Thymen Arensman and Jai Hindley is small, but he was not the rider with the responsibility of attacking.

Netcompany INEOS did so until the finish, and in the final meters Gall launched an early sprint to capture second place, expanding his lead over his rivals by a few seconds as he had the best legs. “I was digging quite deep, but yeah, to gain a few seconds again. It was a very short, very intense stage. My team did a really great job again, and it's also a great start to the third week.”

Gall goes into stage 17 with 24 seconds over Arensman and 57 over Hindley. The two mountain stages remaining are very difficult and can easily see such gaps cut down; however Gall has the privilege of racing conservatively to maintain his second place now.

Reaching first, or taking a stage win with a peak form Vingegaard ahead of him, seems impossible. “I mean, they [Visma] showed again who is in charge here, also as a team. It's really impressive and yeah, Jonas, he's just doing his thing,” he concluded.