Highlights
Report
Briton Simon Yates attacked the final of today’s 19th stage of the Giro d’Italia and held on to deliver Team BikeExchange a spectacular solo stage victory, displaying his great strength in the third and final week of this year’s tour.
After Team BikeExchange worked relentlessly throughout the 166-kilometre stage, Yates repaid his teammates with the victory atop the first category climb, Alpe di Mera, the penultimate summit finish of the 2021 Giro d’Italia.
The 2018 Vuelta a España champion accelerated to follow a move by Joãn Almeida with six kilometres to go, making the catch and then launching a damaging acceleration on his Bianchi Specialissima one kilometre later. The injection of speed saw Yates charge away solo, with none of his general classification rivals able to respond.
Race leader Egan Bernal quickly lost 20 seconds to the 28-year-old, but with Ineos Grenadiers pacing the Maglia Rosa, the gap to Yates remained within 20 to 30 seconds all the way towards the finish line.
Fighting all the way, Yates was able to hold off Joãn Almeida by 11 seconds to take the stage 19 honours; the eighth Grand Tour stage victory of his career.
With time gaps on the line and the addition of 10 bonus seconds for the win, the Team BikeExchange rider moves closer to the Maglia Rosa, now sitting two minutes and 49 seconds adrift, with two hard stages still remaining.
Simon Yates: “I am really happy, the team did a fantastic job today, controlled the start, worked a lot and I managed to finish it off. I tried to do my best today, it wasn’t the most difficult of stages, it was just a very difficult final climb, but tomorrow is very different. It is a very hard stage, back in the high altitude so we will see what I can do.”
Results
Stage
| 1 | Simon Yates (GBr) Team BikeExchange | 4:02:55 |
| 2 | João Almeida (Por) Deceuninck-QuickStep | 0:00:11 |
| 3 | Egan Bernal Gomez (Col) Ineos Grenadiers | 0:00:28 |
| 4 | Damiano Caruso (Ita) Bahrain Victorious | 0:00:32 |
| 5 | Aleksandr Vlasov (Rus) Astana-Premier Tech |
General Classification
| 1 | Egan Bernal Gomez (Col) Ineos Grenadiers | 81:13:37 |
| 2 | Damiano Caruso (Ita) Bahrain Victorious | 0:02:29 |
| 3 | Simon Yates (GBr) Team BikeExchange | 0:02:49 |
| 4 | Aleksandr Vlasov (Rus) Astana-Premier Tech | 0:06:11 |
| 5 | Hugh Carthy (GBr) EF Education-Nippo | 0:07:10 |
Points
| 1 | Peter Sagan (Svk) Bora-Hansgrohe | 135 |
Mountains
| 1 | Geoffrey Bouchard (Fra) AG2R Citroën Team | 180 |
| 2 | Egan Bernal Gomez (Col) Ineos Grenadiers | 121 |
Young Riders
| 1 | Egan Bernal Gomez (Col) Ineos Grenadiers | 81:13:37 |
| 2 | Aleksandr Vlasov (Rus) Astana-Premier Tech | 0:06:11 |
| 3 | Daniel Martinez Poveda (Col) Ineos Grenadiers | 0:07:42 |