Giro d'Italia: Stelvio Pass will offer no hiding place as Tao Geoghegan Hart faces his biggest challenge

Tom Cary
·3 min read
Tao Geoghegan Hart of The United Kingdom and Team INEOS Grenadiers / Forcella Valbona (1782m)/ Snow / Mountains / during the 103rd Giro d'Italia 2020, Stage 17 a 203km stage from Bassano del Grappa to Madonna di Campiglio 1514m - Velo/Tim de Waele 
Tao Geoghegan Hart of The United Kingdom and Team INEOS Grenadiers / Forcella Valbona (1782m)/ Snow / Mountains / during the 103rd Giro d'Italia 2020, Stage 17 a 203km stage from Bassano del Grappa to Madonna di Campiglio 1514m - Velo/Tim de Waele

Tao Geoghegan Hart faces the biggest test of his career on Thursday as the Giro d’Italia peloton takes on the infamous Stelvio Pass.

The young British rider, who sits fourth in the general classification following his brilliant win on stage 15 on Sunday, maintained his position on General Classification on Wednesday as Australian Ben O’Connor (NTT) won stage 17, a 203km trek from Bassano del Grappa to Madonna di Campiglio.

Geoghegan Hart sits just one second off the podium and fewer than three minutes behind long time leader Joao Almeida (Deceunink-QuickStep) in the overall. Almeida faced only one brief attack on Wednesday, from Sunweb’s third-placed rider Jai Hindley, on the final climb up to Madonna di Campiglio. It appeared the rest of the peloton was keeping its powder dry for the upcoming fireworks.

There will be no hiding place on stage 18, which takes the peloton over 207km to the Laghi di Cancano, through the Passo Stelvio, 2,758 metres above sea level and where the temperatures are expected to be just above freezing. Organisers only confirmed on Wednesday that the riders would take on the climb, with the possibility of snow, wind or hail potentially forcing a cancellation. Geoghegan Hart, 25, said he had tried to conserve as much energy as he could once he saw Wednesday stage was not going to be a decisive day.

“I think it was not quite the big selective day that we kind of anticipated and prepared for,” the Ineos Grenadiers rider said of stage 17. “But that’s fine, there’s definitely a few of those coming. The last climb wasn’t really that hard and there wasn’t really any team with the legs to make any selections. So in the end it was just a case of saving energy for tomorrow.

“I think tomorrow [Thursday] is the big day. For sure Saturday as well but tomorrow is the first time we’re going high altitude so there will be some different results I would imagine. We’ll see what happens. It will be a solid day that’s for sure.”

If Geoghegan Hart can come through Thursday's test, and potentially lift himself into a podium spot, he will have a flat day to survive on Friday and then another big mountain day on Saturday, although the Giro will not now cross the French border to take on the Colle dell’Agnello and the Col de l’Izoard after authorities in France refused the race access due to coronavirus. The riders will instead climb Sestriere three times, with the total metres of ascent falling from around 5,500 metres to 4,000 metres.

The race ends on Sunday with a time trial in Milan. Meanwhile, at the Vuelta a Espana, Chris Froome lost another 20-odd minutes as Marc Soler (Movistar) won the second stage. Froome, 35, who is returning from a life-threatening accident suffered last year, lost 11 minutes on stage one and now lies nearly 30 minutes off the overall lead after being dropped from the peloton with 41km to go of the 152km stage from Pamplona to Lukenberri.

The stage was notable for a strange incident which saw a group of five small Asturcon wild horses, local to the northern Spanish Basque region, bursting out of roadside trees and into the group containing race leader Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) and Ireland's second placed Dan Martin (Israel Start Up Nation) as they looked to chase down Soler.