Philip Deignan pulls his Sky teammate Dario Cataldo and King of the Mountains Julian Arredondo (Trek) clear of a bigger 14 man group on the final climb at the Giro d'Italia yesterday.
Thursday May 29, Stage 18: Belluno - Rifugo Panarotta 171km
By Philip Deignan
Like every other morning on this Giro, our Team Sky directeur sportif Dario Cioni kick-started this morning’s team meeting by plugging his laptop into the big screen on the bus and going through a detailed report of what to expect on the stage.
We were shown a map of the route, a profile of each climb, photos and videos of important sections of the stage, including the finish, and even a weather report for the day ahead so that we could anticipate which way the wind would be blowing.
The team plan was pretty similar to the last few mornings with our three climbers; me, Dario Cataldo and Sebastian Henao the guys told to try and get in the early moves.
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Before the action started, I found myself alongside FDJ’s Finnish national champion Jussi Veikkanen in the neutralised section.
We lived quite close to each other when I raced with Ag2r and get on well so I gave him a bit of a slagging for putting his hands in the air for sixth place on yesterday’s stage.
Jussi had got dropped in the run-in yesterday but regained contact with the chase group just before the final sprint, which he won. On crossing the line he threw his hands in the air thinking he had won the stage.
He told me his radio wasn’t working so he didn’t know there were five guys up the road and he was pretty embarrassed about it.
That was probably the longest conversation I had all day because once we hit kilometre zero it was flat out attacking and there was no chatting going on at all.
After spending most of yesterday in the break I felt pretty tired starting off this morning and just stayed in the wheels for the first 20km or so.
The stage began on a sort of false flat and we were tipping along at 50kph, so I gambled a bit that the break wouldn’t go until the first climb, the 15km long Passo San Pellegrino which started after 30km.
Then, I just started following big groups. At one point myself, Dario, Swifty (Ben Swift) and Salvatore (Puccio) got away in a huge group of around 30 guys but Movistar shut us down pretty sharpish.
When we hit the bottom of the climb proper, four or five guys went away with Dario and I got across in the next group just after.
When we all joined up there were 11 of us but then Ivan Basso of Cannondale came across a couple of kilometres later with two more, to give us 14 men up front.
Philip Deignan crosses the line for 3rd on yesterday's mountain stage after looking back to his very best in the mountains yesterday (Photo: Sirotti)
When the break goes on a really hard climb like the Passo San Pellegrini, you know you’re going to have a few decent climbers in the move but when I looked around and saw King of the Mountains Julian Arredondo and his Colombian compatriot Fabio Duarte in there, I knew I was going to be up against it today.
In general, it was pretty steady up front but it wasn’t very well organised. A lot of guys were trying to do the bare minimum in the break. There were guys missing turns and there were a few who just upset the whole function of the group.
Once we got around five minutes gap though, I felt pretty sure we would stay away.
On the second category climb of the Passo del Redebus about 125km in, I was beginning to feel like I was on a good day as I grabbed a bottle from one of the team carers at the top and put my sleeveless rain jacket on to keep out the cold on the descent.
Like he was yesterday, Dutchman Thomas De Gendt was the first one to attack when we hit the bottom of the final climb to the finish. He soon pulled out about 20 seconds but there was still 16km of climbing to be done and at that stage I knew I had to stay calm.
I knew it was going to be a tactical climb so I just had to sit tight and follow the moves.
Martijn Keizer of Belkin set off after De Gendt and Basso did done a big turn on the front with 13km to go, after which I attacked, but Arredondo and Ivan Rovny of Tinkoff-Saxo followed me.
As I got up to Keizer, I swung off the front but Arredondo wouldn’t ride and just followed me over to the right hand side of the road with Rovny in his wheel. A kilometre later the rest of the group had come back up to us.
Basso put in a good dig with around 11km to go and pulled five of us clear, with Duarte, Arredondo, myself and Dario all following the move.
Basso kicked on again but we caught him just before the 10km to go banner where Dario attacked alone and went after De Gendt, who was now 26 seconds up the road.
Once again, Arredondo followed but this time I marked him and got across on his wheel so we had two men in a three man move behind De Gendt with 9.5km to go.
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Deignan leads eventual stage winner and king of the mountains Arredondo on the way to the summit finish yesterday (Photo: Sirotti)
My Sky team were in a good situation, with two guys in the front four, but everyone knew that Arredondo was still the man to beat.
We tried to get the Colombian to ride with us as we chased De Gendt up the steeper section with 9km to go but he was just happy enough to wait and bide his time before he attacked.
He was so confident in his own ability that he was just playing with us and had no problem letting certain guys go, knowing that he would bring them back. Unfortunately though, any attacks I made he followed.
I knew Arredondo was the guy to try and follow and it was just a matter of trying to hang on with him so I put in a long turn at the front in an effort to keep the pace steady.
Duarte came back up to us with 8km to go and 500metres later Franco Pelizzotti of Androni Venezuela regained contact with us too but De Gendt was still dangling up the road.
The two Colombians suddenly jumped together 6.5km from the summit and caught and passed De Gendt.
I’d already made a few accelerations and didn’t want to go too far into the red but managed to claw my way across to them with 500metres later.
There was another bit of a lull and De Gendt and Pelizzotti came back up to us and then attacked again.
Arredondo closed down De Gendt and accelerated again with just over 4km to go.
Duarte jumped after him and I gave chase again. This time tough they were simply too fast and I couldn’t follow them any more.
As the two Colombians rode away from me, I dug deep and caught and passed Pellizotti 3km from the summit.
I looked behind me a few times on the way to the finish but there was nobody there so I was pretty confident I could hold on for third place on the stage.
While I wasn’t able to match the real acceleration of the two Colombians and knew Pellizotti was close behind, it wasn’t like I’d blown totally. I was still going pretty fast.
Having taken third on the stage, I was happy enough afterwards. Looking back, I don’t think I couldn’t have done any better.
When a stronger rider wins you can’t really complain too much, and the strongest guy won today.
There wasn’t much I could do against Arredondo. He was just playing with us.
It was always my plan to try and ride like this in the last week of this Giro but a lot of things have to go right to be able to carry that plan out.
You can’t crash, get sick or carry an injury for the first two weeks and even without all of those things, sometimes you just don’t have it.
I think the team are pretty surprised with my form considering where I was six weeks ago, just coming back into racing again after my broken collarbone.
But, if all the other stuff worked out in my favour, I was relatively confident that I could do something like this in the last week.
I’ve been up the road a few times over the last few days and while it’s been hard, the racing is always hard in the third week, no matter where you are on the road, and I think Saturday’s tough penultimate stage to Monte Zoncolan is another opportunity to do something.
Whether you’re in the bunch or in the break, everyone’s tired now so, if I can, I’ll give it another go on Saturday.
Let’s just hope the leader of the mountains competition isn’t in there next time.
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