Valentin Paret-Peintre beats childhood hero Romain Bardet to Giro win: "I dreamt seeing him on TV and today I battled with him and beat him"

Last year Aurélien Paret-Peintre took a stage victory at the Giro d'Italia and this time around his brother Valentin has succeeded. The Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale rider won for the first time as a pro rider atop the Bocca della Selva summit finish and beat a rider who he looked up to as a youngster.

In the tenth day of the race there was a lot of action early on, but the flat roads did not allow riders to create a strong group. It only happened as the hilly section of the stage began. Both Paret-Peintre brothers were in the breakaway but it was apparent who had the best legs. In the early kilometers of the final climb a strong group moved away from the two dozen-big chase of Jan Tratnik, and only two caught up with the Slovenian.

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Paret-Peintre was the first of which, and he attacked solo to the stage win powerfully inside the final 3 kilometers. "For the stage I saw in the profile the last 4k were the hardest and I said 'ok if I want to attack it's in the last 4k's' so I was waiting waiting waiting all the last climb," he explains in a post-race interview, despite having made several moves throughout the ascent to drop rivals. However perhaps those were not serious attacks for a rider who felt so strong uphill. And he only made a killer move in the final steep kilometers of the ascent. "When I saw the last 3k maybe I attacked." It was a victory with 30 seconds over Romain Bardet, who he talked about:

"I watched him when I was young, when he finished on the podium of the Tour de France. I dreamt seeing him on TV and today I battled with him and beat him." Despite just being May, this is already the 15th win of the season for the French outfit - a number that was matched most recently only in 2018.

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