Magnus Cort takes breakaway victory on stage 10 of the Giro d'Italia on another wet day of racing

Cycling
Tuesday, 16 May 2023 at 17:17
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Magnus Cort has become the second Danish rider to complete their Grand Tour Grand Slam at this Giro d'Italia after taking a win from the breakaway on stage 10.

The day after a rest day is always a tough one to predict and the genuinely miserable weather conditions that were at play in Italy for stage 10, it was incredibly difficult to try and work out what may happen. Trying their luck from the breakaway were four riders including the King of the Mountains and winner of stage 7, Davide Bais.

Alongside Bais in the group up the road were Magnus Cort (EF Education-EasyPost), Derek Gee (Israel - Premier Tech) and Alessandro De Marchi (Team Jayco AlUla).

After numerous withdrawals over the past couple of days, most notably of course Remco Evenepoel, the sopping wet and freezing cold weather conditions continued to take a heavy toll on the riders in the peloton as Aleksandr Vlasov, sixth overall at the start of the day withdrew after being dropped early on, reportedly due to illness.

As the breakaway reached the top of the Passo delle Radici they had just under 4 minutes advantage on the peloton who had begun upping the pace as they neared the summit, shattering the group with a lot of the sprinters being dropped.

Davide Bais was busy extending his overall lead in the King of the Mountains and after taking maximum points on that climb he now had over double the amount of his nearest rival, Thibaut Pinot.

Some daredevil descending by Bahrain - Victorious's Jonathan Milan caused some damage in the front of the peloton as they made their way down, bringing Damiano Caruso, Andrea Pasqualon and Pavel Sivakov clear with him.

With Caruso and Sivakov both in the top 10 of the GC this had the potential to be a big move and as Milan and Pasqualon continued their incredible descending the quartet soon had an advantage of over a minute from the peloton.

Three Bahrain-Victorious riders and Sivakov posed an interesting question for the INEOS Grenadiers. Would they allow the riders to go clear and back Sivakov in a battle with Caruso? Or would they try to pull them back and protect Geraint Thomas's Maglia Rosa.

With Milan going down momentarily on the treacherous descent, Sivakov made a decision, sat up and waited for his teammates back in the peloton.

At the front of the race, Davide Bais had dropped off the leaders on the descent and was somewhere between the front group and the Bahrain trio when the descending stopped and a small, categorised climb began.

With 68km to go the Bahrain - Victorious move had officially come to an end as they were swallowed back up by the peloton.

A flat run-in to the line and just over 2 minutes between breakaway and peloton meant a sprint finish was likely and as numerous sprinters began to reattach themselves to the back of the peloton the leading trio's chances looked slim.

The wet weather and slippery roads were causing chaos with numerous crashes seing riders such as Warren Barguil, Alberto Bettiol and Lukas Postlberger go down.

With 15km to go the battle was still fiercely taking place. The breakaway maintained a 43 second lead over a group containing the Maglia Rosa and a number of the top sprinters.

With 10km to go the gap had actually extended to 47 seconds.

The reduced bunch behind was too small to be called a peloton and it seemed as if that lack of numbers was proving key.

For De Marchi it must have been a case of Deja Vu. Having been heartbreakingly caught with 200m to go from a similar position a few days ago.

With 1.5km to go Gee tried to make his move. Cort was quickly on his wheel although De Marchi struggled to close the gap. As the two in front played games the experienced Team Jayco AlUla rider returned and rode straight over the top.

Running out of gas though it was Magnus Cort who took the victory, his first in the Giro 'd'Italia.

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