Jai Hindley (Bora-hansgrohe) came back from the dead on Blockhaus at the Giro d'Italia today to win stage 9 in a sprint from a six-man group after a brilliant finale.
Romain Bardet (Team DSM) and Richard Carapaz (Ineos Grenadiers) were 2nd and 3rd on a day when those two - and Mikel Landa (Bahrain Victorious) - emerged as the strongest climbers in the race.
However, the Landa-Bardet-Carapaz group eased back towards the top of the final climb and allowed another three-man group to join them, including Hindley, João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) and Domenico Pozzovivo (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux).
Those six went to the line together, with Hindley hitting the front and leading out the gallop from a long way out. While Bardet and Carapaz closed up on him on the line, Hindley took a great win.
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The big story of the day was the implosion of Simon Yates (BikeExchange-Jayco). He went out the back of the select group on the climb when it still numbered more than 20 riders.
Yates, who has been nursing a knee injury after a crash earlier in the race, shed just over 11 minutes and his GC challenge is over, barring major incident.
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Race leader Juan Pedro López (Trek-Segafredo) suffered a minor mishap on the climb when he was forced to unclip after rubbing a wheel. However, while that cost him his place in the group and he never regained contact, he just about did enough to retain the maglia rosa.
He now leads overall by just 12 seconds from Almeida, with Bardet 3rd at 14 seconds and Carapaz 4th at 15 seconds. After the race, however, he apologised in a live TV interview for throwing a bidon at Sam Oomen (Jumbo Visma) during the stage.
That incident does not appear to have been captured by the TV cameras. However, it was unclear whether any action would be taken against him, including a time penalty, now that he has drawn the commissaires' attention to it.
More to come.
