Darren Rafferty (EF Education-EasyPost) is up the road at Giro d'Italia today but one of the other breakaway men, and a rider who would have driven the pace, Josh Tarling (Ineos Grenadiers), has crashed out of the move.
Tarling, the winner of the stage 2 TT in Albania more than two weeks ago, slid out on and hit a roadside barrier to the right not long after the breakaway had become established. Rafferty was one of the riders in the line behind Tarling, though thankfully none of the other six breakaway men crashed.
Unfortunately for Tarling, he was unable to get back on his bike and continue; his crashing out of the race very unfortunate, especially coming after the career high of a Grand Tour stage win on the second day of racing.
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??? | Het is einde Giro d'Italia voor Joshua Tarling. Hij komt vanuit de kopgroep ten val en knalt keihard op de vangrail. ?? #giroditalia
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"Josh Tarling has unfortunately had to abandon the Giro d’Italia following a crash on today’s stage," Ineos Grenadiers said in a brief update. "Our team doctor is with him and he is undergoing further assessment. We will provide an update on his condition as soon as possible."
Today's stage 16 of the Giro takes the riders 203km from Piazzola sul Brenta to San Valentino. There is over 4,700m of elevation gain on what is going to be a very long and hard day in the saddle, especially if the rain continues.
The riders face a summit finish today on the 18.1km Passo di San Valentino cat 1 climb. That will be tackled after the cat 1 ascents of Carbonare and Candriai soften the legs for the big finale.
Rafferty is in this race to support stage 11 winner, and 4th placed overall, Richard Carapaz. He will likely act as a satellite rider for Carapaz today at some point if the breakaway group stays away for long enough.
If the breakaway got a massive gap, there was an outside chance Rafferty might get his own opportunity to take a result. However, the Co Tyrone man made it clear when speaking to stickybottle earlier on this Giro his whole team's sole aim was to support the GC aspirations of Carapaz.
The Irish road race champion is the breakaway group today with Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), Xabier Mikel Azparren (Q36.5), Lorenzo Germani (Groupama-FDJ), Josef Černý (Soudal -QuickStep) and Jon Barrenetxea (Movistar).
At the time of writing, and with 136km remaining, they were being chased by a group of 20 riders, at 1:25, with the peloton a further 5:15 back.
