Dan Martin has said he was impeded by the breakaway men being caught deep inside the final kilometre at stage 9 of the Giro d'Italia today but was happy to have come through the day with his general classification position intact.
The Irishman, riding for Israel Start-Up Nation, who has a flat stage tomorrow followed by the rest day on Tuesday, said he was looking forward to the next phase of the race when the real climbing begins.
“I got a bit swamped coming into the bottom of the dirt climb but at the end, I actually managed to get into a half-decent position,” Martin said of today’s stage, where he finished 5th and again put time into most of his general classification rivals.
“It was a tricky climb because when you’re riding on dirt you can’t really stand in the pedals, which is how I normally create my really high power."
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Martin continued: “Also, there were a lot of guys coming back from the breakaway who were blocking the road, which caused me to go off the gas two or three times in the last kilometer, which wasn’t exactly ideal.
“This was another day where you could lose the race and I’m just happy to continue where we are. I’m looking forward to getting into the real mountains.”
Today's 158km stage from Castel di Sangro to Campo Felice concluded with a 5.9km climb to the finish, ending on a gravel section and with very steep pitches at the last.
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Geoffrey Bouchard (AG2R Citroën) and Koen Bouwman (Jumbo Visma) were the last of the breakaway men to be caught and they stayed clear until deep into the final kilometre, when the general classification men were catching them, and doing it very quickly.
That resulted in frantic efforts to get race vehicles out of the gap between the two breakaway men and the general classification riders closing in behind, with cars and motorbike squeezing past Bouchard and Bouwman on the gravel.
Behind then, Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) went for broke after team mate Gianni Moscon set the pace. And just as the two breakaway riders were coming into sight, Bernal attacked and blew the general classification group apart.
There was a scramble after him, with Giulio Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo) clinging onto Bernal for longest, but letting go just as the Colombian caught and passed the two escapees.
Bernal pressed all the way to the line and didn't celebrate his stage win as he believed there were breakaway riders still ahead of him. However, he won the day by seven seconds from Ciccone and Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana-Premier Tech), who were 2nd and 3rd on the same time.
A further three seconds later came Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck-QuickStep) and Dan Martin - in 4th and 5th and 10 seconds behind Bernal. And then just two seconds later came a line of other general classification men, but all of whom awarded the same time as there was no time gaps between each of them.
That group included Simon Yates (BikeExchange), Hugh Carthy (EF Education Nippo), Romain Bardet (Team DSM) and Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious). The pink jersey today, Attila Valter (Groupama-FDJ), was 25th at 49 seconds and he has now dropped to 5th overall.
After his efforts today, Bernal leads the race by just 15 seconds from Evenepoel, with Vlasov in 3rd at 21 seconds. Dan Martin remains 8th overall and he is 51 seconds off Bernal.
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