Ineos Grenadiers Vs Evenepoel: Brilliant racing for 1 second at Giro | Video | Sticky Bottle

*The action at the intermediate sprint was absolutely brilliant, with Egan Bernal and Remco Evenepoel going head to head for the time bonuses*

Egan Bernal and Remco Evenepoel - with their teams - have gone head-to-head at the intermediate sprint at the Giro d'Italia looking for bonus seconds as the fight for the maglia rosa intensifies.

Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) has the race lead after his stage win yesterday and Evenepoel (Deceuninck-QuickStep) is in 2nd overall, just 15 seconds back.

While there is a very long way to go on this race, which hasn't even reached the halfway point yet, clearly Bernal and Evenepoel and their teams are ready to fight for every second.

With 20km to go today, the second intermediate sprint saw 3, 2 and 1 bonus seconds on offer for the first three across the line. And while Bora-hansgrohe were on the front in a bid to drive the pace and set up Peter Sagan for the victory, Bernal and Evenepoel appeared from nowhere.

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Just before the sprint, Evenepoel could be seen moving up to the front with his team mates and that prompted Bernal and his team to mark him all the way. Ineos Grenadiers were by far the strongest and Filippo Ganna went for the line from a long way out with Bernal in his wheel.

Evenepoel was left to close the gap up to them, which he did, and then he overtook both Ineos Grenadiers riders before Jhonatan Narváez (Ineos Grenadiers) sprinted to take the 3 seconds and deny Evenepoel.

However, the young Belgian looked really impressive and he still took 2nd place and the two seconds on offer. Bernal took 3rd and the one second on offer. If this is a taste of things to come we are in for a great second half of the Giro.