Dan Martin has put in a ride for the ages and taken victory on today's stage 17 of the Giro d'Italia, joining an exclusive club of riders to have won stages on all three Grand Tours.
The Irishman, riding for Israel Start-Up Nation, made the day's main breakaway and then dropped the five other survivors from it on the final climb of the 193km stage from Canazei to Sega di Ala.
Martin put a very significant amount of work into the breakaway and when the escape group reached the penultimate climb the Irish rider drove the pace. He effectively shattered the group, with six riders forming out front to race the final climb to the finish line.
When that six-man group got onto the last climb, the gap between Martin and his surviving escapees back to the favourites' group was down to just over two minutes. And that gap soon dipped to about 1:30 as the real climbing began. However, Martin simply rode away from those he was with and put in a monumental effort up the final climb.
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He threw everything he had at the stage win. And though the general classification battle exploded behind him on the final climb, and the best riders in the race were chasing him, nobody could get near Martin.
He adds his victory on the Giro, his first ever on the Italian Grand Tour, to two stage wins at the Tour de France and two at La Vuelta.
The other big news of the day was race leader Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) cracking on the final climb and losing time to Simon Yates (BikeExchange). Once Bernal faltered on the final climb, Yates and João Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep) went for broke.
However, despite Yates riding as hard as he could to gain time and Almeida really attacking the final kilometre in a bid for a stage win, neither of them could catch Dan Martin. He took the stage win both delighted and in disbelief.
He hung on by a not insignificant 13 seconds from Almeida, with Yates in 3rd at 30 seconds. They were the only two riders who gained time on Martin on the final climb from the moment the Irishman was alone on the ascent.
How it played out
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After an aggressive start today, the riders had just over 50km done when what would prove to be the main breakaway of the day finally went clear, at the climb of Sveseri. It was made up of a mix of very strong riders.
Dan Martin was there, of course, alongside Gianni Moscon (Ineos Grenadiers), Geoffrey Bouchard (AG2R Citroën), Simone Ravanelli (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec), Giovanni Carboni (Bardiani-CSF-Faizane) and Antonio Pedrero Movistar). And it was those six riders that would prove the strongest of the breakaway and reach the base of the final climb together, with just over two minutes on the maglia rosa group.
However, the breakaway was initially much bigger and, as well as those six who would survive into the final climb, the large escape group also contained the following riders:
James Knox and Pieter Serry of Deceuninck-QuickStep), Dries
De Bondt (Alpecin-Fenix), Luis León Sánchez (Astana-Premier Tech), Felix Grossschartner
(Bora-Hansgrohe), Matteo Badilatti (Groupama-FDJ), Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar),
Jacopo Mosca (Trek-Segafredo), Valerio Conti and Alessandro Covi (UAE Team
Emirates) and the Intermarché–Wanty–Gobert Matériaux trio of Jan Hirt, Andrea
Pasqualon and Quinten Hermans.
With just over 50km remaining, the leaders hit the Passo
di San Valentino, a 14km climb at an average gradient of 7.8 per cent. Both
breakaway and peloton split as the road kicked up; Martin aided by switching to
a climbing bike.
On that penultimate climb, Dan Martin pressed hard and only Moscon could match his pace. However, Bouchard, Ravanelli, Carboni and Pedrero also eventually got back to them.
But while Martin’s group became six between top of the penultimate climb and the start of the final climb, the Irishman soon struck out on that final ascent. He danced up the 11.5km climb, which averaged 9.6 per cent, for one of the best wins of his career.
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