Ruthless Tadej Pogacar continues Giro d'Italia domination with summit win on stage 8

Tadej Pogacar continues his domination of the 2024 Giro d'Italia. The Slovenian was ruthless on the final climb of stage 8, not allowing any attacks to go before taking victory from a sprint.

In a brutal start to the day, the opening couple of climbs were raced at full gas as riders attacked early, hoping the breakaway would be allowed freedom. UAE Team Emirates were riding a strong tempo at the front of the bunch though and as such, the elastic wasn't fully snapping.

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As a massive group of over 20 went clear, UAE Team Emirates were beginning to burn through riders in their attempts to keep things under control. There were a few riders well placed in the GC on the attack, including Romain Bardet at 5:23, Michael Storer at 5:58, Jhonatan Narvaez at 7:22 and Georg Steinhauser at 5:56. At the top of the first categorised climb, Simon Geschke took maximum points from a leading quarter that included Steinhauser, Bardet and Valentin Paret-Peintre.

With things calming down slightly after the climb, the attackers regrouped to form a 14-rider break, gaining around two minutes of an advantage over the peloton. That gap stabilised over the next part of the race as the riders caught their breath ahead of the second categorised climb of the day, with around 50km to go. As Mikkel Bjerg began to up the pace for UAE Team Emirates on the climb though, that timegap began to drop towards the minute mark with 45km to go. 

Sensing the impetus starting to fall out of the lead group, Steinhauser attempted to reignite the fire with a strong acceleration. Geschke again took maximum points at the top of the climb to move second in the classification. The gap though was still just 1:30 meaning a stage win from the break was looking unlikely.

As the final climb began, Luke Plapp was the first notable name struggling in the peloton. The Aussie started the day 5th overall and Best Young Rider. The breakaway though was still holding a narrow advantage over an ever-dwindling bunch of main favourites. After a bad time-trial on stage 7, Juan Pedro Lopez was expected to drag time back today but with over 12km to go, the Lidl-Trek leader was in trouble at the back of the Maglia Rosa group.

With 10km to go, BORA - hansgrohe took over from UAE Team Emirates at the front of the peloton and their immediate acceleration immediately caused difficulty behind, dropping top-10 hopefuls Lopez, Filippo Zana and Alexey Lutsenko. In the process too, the breakaway was almost all swallowed up with the exception of Valentin Paret-Peintre out front.

With a bonus seconds sprint at 6km to go on the final climb, there was no GC action as Paret-Peintre swept up 3 and Pogacar's UAE Team Emirates domestiques sweeping up the remaining 2 and 1 from the Maglia Rosa group. When Rafal Majka took over into the final 5km, only Geraint Thomas of the other GC riders had teammates left in the group, that being Thymen Arensman. Majka's upping of the pace also brought an end to Paret-Peintre's attack with 4.2km left.

2km to go, the first GC attack came from Antonio Tiberi with Tadej Pogacar quickly onto his wheel. The next move came from Thymen Arensman but again, Pogacar was straight on the wheel, not letting anything go. Michael Storer tried his luck, Pogacar denied him and in the final few hundred metres, Majka returned to further control things for his leader.

In the sprint for the line, Pogacar opened with 200m to go. Daniel Martinez tried hard to follow but there was no stopping the Slovenian who took victory ahead of Martinez and Ben O'Connor.

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