By Louise Hickey
Thomas De Gendt has won stage 8 of the Giro d'Italia, a decade after claiming his first win on the race, on the Stelvio on the penultimate stage in 2012. Today, the Belgian breakaway specialist got up the road early and made the four-man split that went clear to contest the finish.
The 153km stage - mostly on a circuit - into Napoli was made for the Lotto-Soudal rider as it took in a series of small climbs through the stage; not flat enough for the sprinters but not hard enough for the climbers.
De Gendt won today from by Davide Gabburo (Bardiani CSF Faizane) with Jorge Arcas (Movistar Team) in 3rd and Harm Vanoucke (Lotto Soudal) 4th. Biniam Girmay (Intermarche-Wanty-Gobert Materiaux) led home the second part of the initial breakaway to take 5th.
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Today Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin Fenix) was one of the hotly tipped riders and he didn't disappoint; the Dutchman getting up the road early and instigating the day's main breakaway. It eventually numbered 21 riders and with about 30km raced the group had built a gap of just over 1:30 on the bunch.
That's the way it stayed for about 70km, with the growing gap between the breakaway and the peloton the only factor that changed; growing to about three minutes with 50km to go. At that point - specifically on the Lago Lucrino climb with 46km to go - Van der Poel attacked the breakaway.
His move, and the chase in pursuit of him, put everyone up front under pressure. And when Van der Poel was caught a counter attacked got clear. That group included the eventual top four on the stage - De Gendt, Gabburo, Arcas and Vanhoucke and Simone Ravanelli (Drone Hopper-Androni Giocattoli).
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Behind them, a six-man chasing group emerged from the remains of the large breakaway. It included Guillaume Martin (Cofidis), Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious), Mauro Schmid (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl), Girmay and Van der Poel.
The gap between the two groups would at one point come down to 20 seconds where the road kicked up on the run in to the finish. As the line got closer, Girmay, Van der Poel and Schmid managed to drop the others in the chasing group in the hope they could still get back to the front of the race.
However, the leaders - trimmed back to four after Ravanelli was dropped - survived to fight it out for victory. De Gendt, aided by team mate Vanoucke, easily took the victory.
He finished just 15 seconds up on Girmay, in 5th, with Mauro Schmid (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl) 6th and Van der Poel 7th; those three all on the same time. In the end, 15 of the original 21 breakaway survived to finish ahead of the remains of the peloton.
That peloton - trimmed back to just 70 riders - finished 3:33 down on stage winner de Gendt. As all of the general classification favourites were in the main bunch there was no change in the overall.
Juan Pedro López (Trek-Segafredo) continues to lead overall by 38 seconds from Lennard Kämna, though the Bora-hansgrohe rider attacked in the final in a bid to get clear and take the race lead.
Tomorrow's 191km stage 9 finishes atop the Blockhaus mountain, where the general classification men are expected to test each other and where the final destination of the maglia rosa should become clearer.
