Tirreno-Adriatico stage 5: Jonas Vingegaard dominates with mountain stage win

Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) stormed to victory atop San Giacamo on stage 5 of Tirreno-Adriatico, launching a vicious attack on the steepest section of the final climb and leaving his rivals in the dust.

The Dane showed his prowess on an 11 percent section of the San Giacamo climb around 29km before the finish, powering away from a chasing group including Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe), Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), and Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates).

The chasers all came in together in a sprint for the bonus seconds on the line, with Ayuso snatching second place just ahead of Hindley, 1:22 behind the stage winner.

Such was Vingegaard’s margin of victory that he also took the leader’s maglia azzurra from Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) in a reshuffle of the GC standings, giving him a 54 second gap to second-placed Ayuso and 1:20 to Hindley ahead of Saturday's mountain stage.

Remaining chasers Thymen Arensman (Ineos Grenadiers), O’Connor and Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates) came in together and are each just behind the provisional GC podium, around a minute and a half down on the race leader with three stages to go.

Read more: Tirreno-Adriatico stage 4: Jonathan Milan takes the win to deny Jonas Abrahamsen on the line

“We always had to plan to give it a shot today. The team rode amazingly, I’m really happy to take the win and to pay the guys back. It’s a really nice stage win, once again thank you to my teammates," Vingegaard said at the finish.

"We wanted to go full gas on the climb, first Steven and Dylan had to pull the whole day, which they did amazingly, then Attila had to do a really hard pace from the bottom and Ben had to take over and really speed up. The plan went perfectly today and I was luckily able to go solo.

The two-time Tour de France winner crossed the line kissing his wedding ring, but when asked whether it was a gesture in support of International Women’s Day he replied, “To be honest I haven’t thought about it. I didn’t know it was International Women’s Day, sorry about that! But of course, I get all the support from my wife and she’s always there for me, so it’s also a way of supporting her.”

How the action unfolded

Stage 5 always looked like a GC battleground after several processional sprint stages, with a tough, hilly route featuring climbs straight from the flag drop in Torricella Sicura. The 12km climb of the 6.2km hors categorie San Giacamo, only 24km from the finish, was expected to be decisive. And so it proved on a day which saw almost 3,000m of altitude gained across 146km of racing, ending with another kick uphill in a 7 percent final kilometre to the finish in Valle Castellana.

Read more: Chris Froome abandons Tirreno-Adriatico due to scaphoid fracture

Perhaps annoyed by his second-place on stage 4’s sprint, won by new race leader Milan, Jasper Philipsen attacked straight away. In the early stages of the race a settled breakaway of ten riders formed, featuring some serious talent in the form of Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers), Simon Clarke (Israel Premier-Tech), Kasper Asgreen (Soudal Quick-Step) and Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility) among others.

Their advantage floated between one and two minutes for much of the day, as Visma-Lease a Bike moved onto the front, the yellow and black jerseys an ominous warning sign that team leader Vingegaard was planning an attack.

Ganna was uncontested and took full points at the intermediate sprint in Campli, but the breakaway started to splinter on the steep slopes of San Giacamo, with the peloton rapidly approaching and absorbing the stragglers.

Andrea Vendrame (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) launched to try to hold off the bunch and set up team leader O’Connor on the chicanes of the climb, but Hungarian road race champion Attila Valter (Visma-Lease a Bike) ensured that the remaining trio of Vendrame, Cort and Alessandro De Marchi (Jayco AlUla) were caught with 7km to go to the top.

Vingegaard makes his move

And shortly afterwards Visma-Lease a Bike launched their attack. Steven Kruijswijk’s acceleration split the peloton and Vingegaard sped away on the steep 11 percent section, looking behind him once before steering ahead and almost out of sight.

O’Connor and Hindley were quickest to react and got a small gap on a whittled-down group of Ayuso, Del Toro, Arensman, Cian Uijtdebroeks (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Ivan Sosa (Movistar), who continued to give chase but never appeared likely to catch the Dane. Enric Mas (Movistar) and Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) were in another group even further back.

Read more: Tom Pidcock 'regrets' Tirreno-Adriatico tactics but hopes to make an impact on GC

Vingegaard quickly extended his advantage to 55 seconds as he crested the top of the climb, taking the maximum 15 KOM points and moving into the green jersey as well as blue by the end of the day. Hindley and O’Connor were reabsorbed and O’Connor did well to get back into the group racing for second place after falling behind thanks to a difficult corner, hindered by the rough road surface.

The guaranteed stage winner, however, gave a descending masterclass – even despite almost missing a turn at one point – as the partially gravel-paved surface gave way to newly relaid asphalt. Ayuso attempted to springboard off del Toro at the front of the group but was continually reeled back in, with the gap expanding again as Vingegaard returned to his favoured uphill terrain in the race’s closing stages.

Having established what is likely to be an unassailable lead, Vingegaard has the chance to extend it on the next two mountainous stages and secure the trident trophy.