Jumbo Visma may have seen its general classification hopes on the Giro blow to pieces on Mount Etna at the start of the week but the Dutch squad came good today with a brilliant victory at the end of stage 7.
Koen Bouwman (28) took the first Grand Tour stage win of his career into Potenza after 196km of hard racing. Tom Dumoulin was among the four breakaway survivors today and rode to help his younger team, who put his superior finishing kick to good use when it mattered most.
With Bouwman and Dumoulin today at the finish were Davide Formolo (UAE Team Emirates) and Bauke Mollema (Trek Segefredo), who finished 2nd and 3rd respectively.
All four were among an initial seven-man breakaway that also contained Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious), Diego Camargo (EF Education-EasyPost) and Davide Villella (Cofidis). They got clear about 70km into the stage, which saw a blistering opening phase.
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Many teams were trying to make the breakaway on what was a medium, but very tough, mountain stage, with even riders like Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin) and Richard Carapaz (Ineos Grenadiers) joining some of the attacks.
The breakaway pulled out a gap of almost six minutes at one point, putting eventual stage winner Bouwman into the virtual race lead for a time, while he also hoovered up climbers' points to take the lead in that competition.
By the time the breakaway reached the cat 3 climb of La Sellata, with 30km to go, Camargo and Poels were shed from the group. And on the climb as Dumoulin, Mollema and Formolo attacked each other, it looked at times like any one of them may be strong enough to ride away.
Those attacks put Bouwman under pressure and he was dropped, though he managed to claw his way back on before the top of the climb, where he once again took maximum points. Once the leading four went over the top - still be over three minutes in hand on the Ineos Grenadiers-led remains of the peloton, Dumoulin rode in the service of Bouwman.
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On the run in, Formolo and Mollema took turns to attack, though they were covered by Bouwman, with Dumoulin being repeatedly dropped and getting back on during what was a fantastic finale.
In the end, Dumoulin hit the front to try and keep the pace high on the run in to the finish before the road kicked up again a little just before the line, where Bouwman's sprint was too much for the others.
Bouwman took the victory two seconds clear of Mollema and Formolo, with Dumoulin 19 seconds back in 4th and celebrating wildly as he crossed the line. Villella, who lost his place in the breakaway after he crashed, placed 5th at 2:25, with what was left of the peloton finishing at 2:59.
As race leader, Juan Pedro Lopez of Trek-Segafredo, was in that group with all the main favourites there was no change in the overall; the Spanish rider still leading by 38 seconds from stage 4 winner Lennard Kämna.
The race now enters a big weekend, with Saturday's stage 8 taking the riders on a 153km circuit race starting and finishing in Napoli. While the climbs are very modest the riders will hit them frequently. A 3.3km climb, at 4.7 per cent, crested just 7km from the finish may do more damage than expected as it looks like a perfect springboard for a climber who wants to take it on.
But the big story of the weekend is Sunday's 191km stage to the summit of Blockhaus. That final mountain - 13.9km with an average gradient of 8.4 per cent - comes immediately after the descent of the 10.8km cat 1 Passo Lanciano, at 7.2 per cent.
Those two mountains, one right after the other, represent a big test for those with designs on the final podium in two weeks time. By tomorrow evening, the group of hopefuls already out of the race for pink will be bigger.
