"We kept it a bit more open" - Jonas Vingegaard's unplanned attack leads to maiden Giro d'Italia win

Jonas Vingegaard has soared to his first ever Giro d'Italia stage win this Friday afternoon. The Corsa Rosa's first high mountain stage featured a summit finish on the mythical climb to Blockhaus, where the Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider managed to deliver with a convincing win.

“Today is a big day for me. It’s my first Giro d’Italia stage win. It’s a nice day. My teammates did an amazing job working the whole day for this. I’m happy to be able to pay them back and finish it off today," Vingegaard said in a post-race interview.

Visma aided Bahrain - Victorious throughout the day when it came to controlling the breakaway on a stage that had over six hours in duration; and when the final climb came about, Vingegaard was well surrounded. Davide Piganzoli and Sepp Kuss executed their task as expected, and launched Vingegaard into an attack.

There was no specific moment on the steep climb where the move was planned to be launched. “No, we kept it a bit more open to see when the moment was there. Yeah, there was a lot of wind and at moments a lot of headwind, so it was a very tough climb.”

Giulio Pellizzari initially followed the Dane's attack, but clearly went over his limits by doing so. He cracked, and lost almost a minute at the finish line. Instead it was Felix Gall who came the closest - surprisingly close, crossing the finish line only 13 seconds behind. In the GC the gap is small, and doesn't allow Visma to have control of their rivals.

"I mean, I know Felix is a very strong rider, and you know he will be up there close. He didn’t surprise me, he will be a big opponent, and he’s definitely a guy we’ll have to think about".

The gap to Gall was not overly convincing, whilst it did seem like Vingegaard also lacked the ideal pacing. He lost some seconds in the final kilometers to the Austrian, likely as a consequence of the accelerations he used to drop Pellizzari.

With a three-minute time gain on pink jersey Afonso Eulálio, the Portuguese's threat to him is also not meaningful. “I mean I’m definitely happy I could take back some time, and that was a good day for me, good day for us, just to take back time and take some time on my opponents, that’s a good day for us,”

“I think in general today was a good day, I think it was a very, very long day on the bike, almost six and a half hours in total, so maybe I can improve in this race," he concluded.