A close 2d place, a 'man of the stage' performance and huge progress in the king of the mountains classification - it was all in a day's work for Ben Healy on stage 15 of Giro d'Italia today.
Describing his day on the attack on the road to Bergamo as "not too bad" the EF Education-EasyPost Irish rider said he almost gave all of his rivals the slip on the final climb, but felt he made a costly mistake earlier on the ascent.
The large breakaway group Healy was in blow apart on the last major climb of the day - the 10km long Roncola Alta cat 2, crested some 31.5km from the finish.
As it progressed, Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates) and Marco Frigo (Israel Premier Tech) led the way, riding clear of everyone else. Healy was next on the road but got stranded a long way behind the two leaders, with Einer Rubio (Movistar Team) for company.
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While Healy eventually attacked the Colombian and rode across to the two leaders, the gap he had to close was a big one. After the stage, he said that having to put in such a big effort had perhaps undermined the way he could race the remainder of the climb.
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Though he got across to the two leaders and then attacked them, with around 2km of climbing remaining, he could not fully shake McNulty, who limited his losses and then caught Healy on the descent.
"I had him for a bit," Healy said of his main objective on the climb, dropping McNulty. "Maybe I made a bit of a mistake waiting for Rubio, I thought he was going to bring me back (to the two leaders). But it meant I had to put in a pretty big effort just to get back up to McNulty and Frigo.
"I had the legs to drop them on the steeper bit, but as soon as it shallowed out again I was struggling and he (McNulty) slowly but surely clawed me back. And then I couldn't drop him on that last little bit (of climbing just before the finish) either. He was strong today."
Asked if he was disappointed or proud of his performance today, stage 8 winner Healy said "a bit of both". "It was a nice race, and hopefully a good show for people, and we raced until the line as well, so it was good fun."
While he planned to lead out the two-up sprint between himself and McNulty, that plan went by the wayside as Frigo caught them with 500m to go and launched the sprint. Healy was forced to close the gap Frigo opened when he kicked, and then McNulty came off Healy's wheel and just got past the Irish rider to win, with Healy 2nd and Frigo 3rd.
Having targeted the climbers' classification points through the stage, Healy has now moved up five places in that classification to 4th. He has 108 points compared to 144 for Davide Bais (EOLO-Kometa) who is leading the competition. That puts Healy in real contention in that classification and even one more breakaway ride would probably put him into the climbers' jersey.
