Usually, on a brutal 244km mountain stage when your team decimates the peloton, you win the stage, and you smash a climbing record by more than a minute, it means you have taken total control of the race, which for 1.5km seemed like exactly what Jonas Vingegaard had done at the Giro d'Italia.
He'd put his team to work on the lower slopes of the 13.6-kilometre Blockhaus climb, and with 5.5km of the ascent left to take on, he had attacked with only one man able to follow: Gilulio Pellizzari. A worthy challenger, yes, but Vingegaard looked ominous as he controlled his breathing and kept looking back at the Italian, knowing that he could accelerate at will until he broke the Italian.
