The “strade bianche” gravel road stage even if there’s only a few kilometres of the dust roads. Today’s stage suits the breakaway.

Lucky Lucques: so much for the sprint stage, the course with the finale that suited the sprinters most in the opening week saw a breakaway take the win. Alpecin-Deceuninck drove the pace up the Passo Bracco to sap other sprinters but it reeled in the day’s early breakaway which meant there was open road for fresh attackers.

A quartet went clear with 70km to go… and stayed away with the chasing teams coming up short. You could see riders taking a pull on the front of the peloton and theatrically looking over their shoulders for the next rider to come through, only nobody was. Alpecin’s activity earlier probably left a lot of sprint trains and workers rinsed.

In the streets of Lucca Andrea Pietrobon attacked the quartet just before the flamme rouge and got a gap and Enzo Paleni seemed to be the first to crack and chase which got Michael Valgren in touching distance of Pietrobon only for Thomas to come around like a crafty fox, the kind of skills he’s honed on the track for years. He told the Bidon podcast the other day his dream would be to “play” for a stage from the breakaway. It came true.

It’s also overdue. Thomas is a talented and versatile rider but without the palmarès or impact on the road so far, even if he’s been French TT champion. Today he got Cofidis’s first win of the season. If someone had to lose, spare a thought for Michael Valgren who got his best result after a horror crash in 2022, the final stage of the Route d’Occitanie where he came close to needing a hip replacement and endured a long rehab to get here.

The Route: 180km and 1900m of vertical gain. There’s 70km to the first climb, a procession but increasingly scenic and the climb to Volterra marks the change in terrain but little more.

The first gravel sector is approached by a gentle downhill and by itself the 4.4km section is nothing scary, it’s flat and regular in surface, with even a tarmac portion along the way. The difficulty is moving up, anyone out of position here is going to struggle to recover as the road isn’t wide and everyone will be thinking of what is up next.

There’s only a brief passage on the main road before the second section begins and this is very different, the road plunges down and then rises after and it is much more technical and twisty, it’s the Bagnaia sector from Strade Bianche.

Once the gravel is done the roads are hard going, plenty of unmarked climbs that pitch up steeply and twisting roads, it’s not easy for dropped riders to be towed back. The final section of gravel isn’t so bad and runs along top of a ridge.

The Finish: a tough wall to tackle 4km from the finish including the Via dei Poveri, a steep and narrow road that does get close to 20%, a real “leg breaker” before a gentle descent and into Rapolano for the finish.

The Contenders: let’s start with Tadej Pogačar (UAE) because while a breakaway is probably going to win, if things work out such that the move doesn’t work or the GC teams are stressed to the point of trying to out-ride each other for position then he’s the obvious pick to clean up in a sprint from a small group.

However today should suit the breakaway and many riders will have marked today as such, there should be a good fight to get in the move as opposed to some riders from wildcard invitees floating away.

For the breakaway most of the field are over four minutes down so a move can go without even posing a threat to Pogačar’s maglia rosa and of course he and his team can always “lend” it to the best placed rider up the road if they don’t look much of a threat for the overall win. Is Filippo Ganna (Ineos) allowed to go away or is he going to be reserved as a luxury bodyguard for Geraint Thomas and resting for the TT tomorrow? Jhonatan Narvaez is a good match for the course here.

Christophe Laporte (Visma-LAB) looks suited but the form is unknown, plus he had a hard crash yesterday, likewise team mate Attila Valter. Laurence Pithie (Groupama-FDJ) is a classics kind of rider with a fast finish but he’s making his grand tour debut after a long spring campaign so no pressure to win. Max Schachmann (Bora-hansgrohe) will like the climbing. Andrea Vendrame (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) is a crafty rider who was looking strong in Romandie recently. Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-Quickstep) will be up for today but his win rate is low these days. With no sprinter and no GC contender EF Education-Easypost will want to be in the action today so after Valgren yesterday, perhaps it’s Andrea Piccolo today.

Wider range picks include Kevin Vermaerke (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) who is due a result, Nicola Conci (Alpecin-Deceuninck) who was fifth in Torino and because Benjamin Thomas (Cofidis) was going to be a pick today, maybe team mate Stefano Oldani doubles up instead?

| | – | | | Vendrame, Narvaez, Pogačar | | | Schachmann, Alaphilippe, Pithie, Conci |

Weather: sunshine and 22°C, a NE breeze will be a headwind at times in the finish.

TV: KM0 is at 12.55pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in by 4.00pm for the sterrato, earlier to watch the fight for position.

Postcard from Rapolano
Thanks to the Eroica cycle ride and the Strade Bianche the dust roads of the Sienese hills have a vintage feel about them. One dusting and today’s riders are teleported back to the good old days.

Yes they are romantic but there’s nothing too special about the sterrato roads. They are just roads with the usual Italian nomenclature, like Strada Provinciale 46. They maintained by municipal road crews rather preserved by volunteers tasked with protecting cultural heritage. School buses pick up kids every morning, commuters drive home on them in the evening and all with normal cars, no 4x4s required.

They’re not limited to this corner of Italy. Just to the south the Marche region has as many if not more of these roads but you can find them all over Italy, in the Veneto to the north-east we have the late-season pro races as a promotional pitch to attract gravel cyclists. Piedmont, the host region of the start has plenty, both amid vineyards but also into the Alps with old military roads like the Via del Sale and the Strada dell’Assietta – which includes the Finestre pass – although these are very different, “old military roads” rather than everyday things. Either way there are a lot of options in Italy for gravel and we’ll see if future editions of the Giro can embrace this, or does organiser RCS have a duty to promote the Tuscan versions because it owns the Strade Bianche race?

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