Blazin’ Saddles: Bora target Carapaz, Landa on the charge - Things to look out for in final week of the Giro d’Italia

A week ago the top 12 riders were separated by 1min 27sec; now there’s a chasm of over nine minutes between Ecuador’s Richard Carapaz in pink and the Czech climber Jan Hirt down in twelfth. Realistically, only five riders can now win this Giro, with just one minute separating Carapaz and Hirt’s Intermarche-Wanty-Gobert teammate Domenico Pozzovivo in fifth.

While there are only two more summit finishes on the menu, another 16 more categorised climbs – including the highest of the race, the Passo Pordoi – will ensure that the ultimate destiny of the maglia rosa may well come down to the final time trial in Verona next Sunday.

There is, of course, so much more to play for than the pink jersey – with the blue king of the mountains jersey competition in rude health even if the maglia ciclamino and white jersey classifications look done and dusted. But with a raft of riders now looking to save their races in the way Guilio Ciccone did at Cogne – or to sign off with a bang as Vincenzo Nibali threatened to do one day earlier at Torino – the next six days promise to be quite special.

Let’s run through the main talking points and things to look out for from Stages 16 to 21.

Saturday’s stupendous circuit race outside Torino saw Bora-Hansgrohe light the torch paper and watch the entire peloton burn. The gaps were enormous: Juan Pedro Lopez, the pink jersey, lost over four minutes for 10th place while Alejandro Valverde, just two places back in twelfth, shipped almost double that. It was a day many of the outsiders – the likes of Lopez, Valverde, Guillaume Martin, Hugh Carthy and Thymen Arensman – checked out of the GC battle entirely. It was also a day where Richard Carapaz was forced to go on the front foot early on because his entire Ineos team had been blown away.

It was Jai Hindley’s Bora who did the damage with the kind of tactics we usually associate with Ineos – and certainly not with Movistar, the last team to approach a Grand Tour with the similar kind of leadership trident employed by Bora in Italy. But it’s paying dividends for the German team, who have Hindley up to second place, Emanuel Buchmann looking solid back in seventh, and Wilco Kelderman clearly with good legs despite his losses the day Hindley won on Blockhaus.

Carapaz, true, hasn’t yet looked anything other than entirely in control; even after his early crash on Sunday, the Olympic champion kept his cool and never struggled with any of the climbs in his first day in pink. But if Bora-Hansgrohe can continue to use their power in numbers to isolate the Ecuadorian, we may yet see some other facial expressions etched across Carapaz’s face before the end of this week.

For Hindley, riding into pink instead of out of it on the final day would represent the Australian coming full circle following a breakout ride in 2020 that many had down as an anomaly brought about by circumstance and the pandemic. The 26-year-old looks to be in superb form and certainly capable of overturning a seven-second deficit.

The two riders vying for that third spot on the final podium may well have something in store that will make them aim higher than third. Joao Almeida and Mikel Landa are currently 30 seconds and 59 seconds down in the general classification but neither has yet to get into their stride.

Almeida taking to Instagram on Saturday to thank his team for their efforts during the tough stage to Torino was pretty generous given the Portuguese rode most of it on his own. Despite finishing fourth and sixth in the Giro while at Quick-Step, it seems that even now, at UAE Team Emirates, the consistent 23-year-old hasn’t been fully backed.

The likes of Rui Costa, Alessandro Covi, Diego Ulissi and Davide Formolo are all excellent riders in their own right, but you get the impression that they’re targeting individual results rather than Almeida’s push for pink. Put simply: they wouldn’t be so flaky if in the services of Tadej Pogacar in July.

It’s a shame because Almeida still has a very good chance at winning this Giro – especially with the race culminating in a time trial where he should excel.

After losing half an hour on Saturday in Torino, Formolo shipped another 26 minutes on the way to Cogne in Stage 15, which he later described as “the worse day of my life”. It will be telling now if the 29-year-old goes all in for Almeida, or if he goes all in to end his seven-year wait for another Giro stage win. You suspect the latter.

For Landa, he’s ridden this race largely without incident – save for a couple of spills on the road to Blockhaus. While he doesn’t look to be in the same kind of imperious form as he was before crashing out of last year’s Giro, the Basque climber had been consistent until Stage 14, when he couldn’t join the likes of Hindley and Almeida in the pursuit of Carapaz up the road on Superga and the Colle delle Maddalena.

With his compatriot and teammate Pello Bilbao, Landa limited his losses in Torino. The Bahrain Victorious pair could still play a key role in the battle for pink. They let Santiago Buitrago off the leash on Sunday during the GC stalemate, but they may need the young Colombian – as well as the experienced Dutchman Wout Poels, who has been a bit of a lone ranger so far – to pull their weight in the final week.

Bilbao, sixth at 1:52, may even have to jeopardise his own chances by putting himself in the service of Landa, who has a good chance to make his first and only Grand Tour podium since the 2015 Giro.

Koen Bouwman has been one silver lining in Jumbo-Visma’s otherwise wretched Giro, his victory in Stage 7 also providing the Dutchman with his first stint in blue. With the man who teed up his win, Tom Dumoulin, no longer in the race, Bouwman rode back into the maglia azzurra on Sunday and you expect he won’t give it up as easily.

Jumbo-Visma need to focus on something now that Dumoulin has gone and both Tobias Foss and Sam Oomen are well down on GC. Expect those two riders to do their best to pick up a stage win while Bouwman gets in the breaks to pick up KOM points. With 109pts to his name, he now leads Diego Rosa by 17pts in the standings but there are still a maximum 424 points up for grabs.

Now that Spain’s Juanpe Lopez is done with pink, Guilio Ciccone may target blue. The Italian won in Cogne to give Trek-Segafredo fresh impetus while drawing a line under a difficult period for himself personally. In doing so he moved up to fourth place in the KOM standings. Ciccone still trails Bouwman by 51 points but all bar one of those could come on the highest climb of the race, the Passo Pordio, on the penultimate stage.

Bouwman’s biggest obstacle, however, could come from one of the GC riders. In their pursuit of the pink jersey, Hindley (62pts) and Carapaz (56pts) may amass enough to take the maglia azzurra as an incidental security blancket.

There’s just one more stage remaining where a bunch sprint is possible – the largely flat 151km “recovery day” Stage 18 from Borgo Valsugana to Treviso. Arnaud Demare will be favourite to take a fourth stage win for Groupama-FDJ – and there should be enough appetite from the likes of Mark Cavendish (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl), Alberto Dainese (Team DSM), Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious), Simone Consonni (Cofidis) and Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates) to ensure a fast finish takes place.

That said, this has been a barren race so far for the versatile breakaway-friendly sprinter Magnus Cort (EF Education-EasyPost). The Dane may see in the two fourth-category climbs and uphill intermediate sprint the ideal terrain on which to get in the winning move. Cort may also find an ally in Stage 1 winner Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix). The Dutchman has tried his best to add a second stage win and this may be his best – and last – chance. Plus, he only has some added extra incentive now in the form of a pineapple pizza…

For Mark Cavendish to make it two in Stage 18 a lot will have to go his and Quick-Step’s way: not only will a Van der Poel-powered break have to be thwarted, an in-form Demare and his supreme Groupama-FDJ train will have to be beaten at their own game.

With two more summit finishes remaining as well as two other mountain stages with downhill runs to the line, a more likely scenario is for Simon Yates (BikeExchange-Jayco) to take his third stage win of this race, or for the likes of Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost), James Knox (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl) or Matthew Holmes (Lotto Soudal) to take a career first stage win in the Giro. All of the above are out of the GC picture and are riding for teams with no remaining focal points other than targeting stage wins. There will be opportunities and it would be a surprise if race’s remaining British contingent did not find themselves right in the thick of things.

With 118 years between then, Vincenzo Nibali (Astana-Qazaqstan), Domenico Pozzovivo (Intermarche-Wanty-Gobert) and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) have enjoyed something of a collective Indian Summer during this Giro. While an untimely mechanical preceded a slum down the standings for the Spanish veteran on Sunday, Nibali was in with a shout at Torino while the bandy-legged Pozzovivo still finds himself in the top five after a string of strong finishes.

A stage win for Pozzovivo would be impressive – he’d have to drop his GC rivals, catch them snoozing, or lose enough time early in the week to be granted leeway – but Nibali and Valverde may be luckier. Gone are the days when either of them can win a summit finish, but Stage 16 to Aprica or Stage 17 to Lavarone – with their short descents preceding short, flat runs to the line – may provide more scope for a swansong.

We have already discussed the likes of Bouwman, Ciccone and the British contingent, but there are many riders – and teams – who will be looking to save their races during the final week.

With leader Romain Bardet gone and his own GC ambitions in tatters, Team DSM’s Thymen Arensman may find himself off the leash – ditto the likes of Sam Oomen (Jumbo-Visma), Lucas Hamilton (BikeExchange-Jayco), Lorenzo Fortunato (Eolo-Kometa), Ivan Sosa (Movistar), Mauri Vansevenant (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl), Joe Dombrowski (Astana-Qazaqstan) and Attila Valter (Groupama-FDJ).

Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) and Magnus Cort (EF Education-EasyPost) are still one Giro triumph short of a grand slam of Grand Tour stage wins, while Natnael Tesfatsion (Drone Hopper-Androni Giacattoli) will look to bounce back from his high-speed crash and build on the success of his fellow Eritrean Biniam Girmay.

None of the Italian wildcard teams have picked up a win yet so it’s fair to say we should see a fair amount of Drone Hopper, Bardiani-CSF and Eolo-Kometa off the front of the race before Sunday’s decisive 17.4km time trial in Verona, where the pink jersey could be decided on the final fourth-category climb of the 105th edition of La Corsa Rosa.