Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) came to the fore on the hardest day of racing so far at the Giro d’Italia and made a substantial dent in his time deficit to the maglia rosa, gaining 54 seconds on Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) to close within 26 seconds.
Yates made a late attack on the final climb to the San Valentino summit finish to make his mark. Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) was already ahead after his own blazing attack but Yates was almost equally as powerful as he cracked Del Toro.
The Ecuadorian moved to within five seconds of second placed Yates and so is only 31 seconds down on Del Toro as the fight for the podium places changed massively.
“I could feel something,” Yates said at the finish to a media huddle, including Cyclingnews, knowing there were GC favourites close behind when he made the first accelerations with 8.5km to race.
Wout van Aert had helped position his Visma teammate for the final climb, they were unable to catch XDS Astana duo Lorenzo Fortunato and Christian Scaroni who won the stage but Yates showed his GC credentials.
With just under 3.5km to ride, Yates dropped Del Toro and tried to keep Carapaz within reach. The Brit would finish eighth on the stage, but gave up 42 seconds to the EF rider.
“It wasn’t easy with the rain in the beginning. I felt like I’d already been trying to get rid of the pink jersey. Yeah, Carapaz got a good gap.”
Visma began with aggression like they did on stage 15.
On Sunday, they put Bart Lemmon into the breakaway for an option if the favourites blew up, but Yates remained with his GC rivals. On Tuesday, it was Van Aert who got into the early break and delivered his GC man into position.
“Simon is doing a good job, so it was a good ride for us, but a particularly tough one. I burned 7,300 calories today. I was supposed to be in the breakaway, especially when other GC teams were there, such as EF or Ineos,” Van Aert said to Sporza.
“And when [Darren] Rafferty and [Josh] Tarling were in front, a gap opened up. I didn’t hesitate and crossed. Although it wasn’t the intention to ride with six in front for an entire hour, that secretly costs a lot of energy.
“But for me, the only way to be of value to Simon is to start with a small lead.”
Van Aert let his leader take over on the final 19km, but it wasn’t the catch of the two-rider break that Yates had in mind at that time, just dropping the pink jersey.
Coming off a rest day to the massive mountain day of climbing, stage 16 was marked by early wet weather as well as the four categorised ascents that disrupted the general classification. While he was banged up from a previous crash in week two, Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) crashed again on the first big descent and withdrew.
As the race continues with three more mountain stages to go, the Visma rider has fewer rivals to track, as Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) are no longer close by. Both faded with the aggressive pace on Tuesday’s final climb, Ayuso completely dropped from the GC fight.
There wasn’t a lot of chatter from the second-overall rider after the chaotic stage, with more work to be done across five more days of racing.
“It was hard for me. So we’ll see how the next days go,” Yates said.
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