There are a lot of factors that go into the art of the breakaway, but perhaps the most convincing reason why this Giro is still wound up so tight is the bonuses sprinkled across each stage.
The 2018 Giro is turning into an epic tug-of-war between explosive climber Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) and TT ace Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb).
Time bonuses are an essential tenet of Yates’s strategy to try to win the maglia rosa. So long as Yates is feeling strong, Mitchelton-Scott will keep driving the peloton toward the line with the hope of winning the stage to take the bonus and gap Dumoulin. That’s bad news for wanna-be breakaway artists in this Giro.
“The more time I can get on Dumoulin, the better,” Yates said. “Maybe I will blow up later in the race, but we have to try.”
How effective are time bonuses? Yates started Thursday’s stage 47 seconds ahead of archrival Dumoulin. Without time bonuses, Yates would only be 32 seconds ahead of the defending Giro champion. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but the Giro’s been won or lost by less.
“I’m not scared of the third week — I’m scared of the time trial,” Yates said. “That’s why I am chasing every bonus I can.”
This year’s Giro offers time bonuses of 10, 6 and 4 seconds for the top three (except in time trials) and 3, 2 and 1-second bonuses at one of the day’s intermediate sprints in each stage.
These intermediate and finish-line time bonuses are producing wild inside-the-race skirmishes and real-time finish-line battles. Yates was burying himself Wednesday to Osimo just as much to win the stage as he was to win the bonus and gap Dumoulin. So far, the speedy Brit has been able to snag some intermediate sprints as well use his finishing punch with lethal efficiency.
“Yates is so strong, it’s unbelievable,” Dumoulin said after stage 10 when Yates darted out to snag the day’s mid-race prime. “He took the intermediate sprint so easy.”
As a result of those valuable seconds in play coupled with the GC still largely unsettled, breakaways are having a harder time finding room to move.
Only two breakaways have been successful, and both of them have an asterisk.
In stage 6, Esteban Chaves (Mitchelton-Scott) took the flowers after riding clear in the day’s main break to Mount Etna. He was the group’s sole survivor and probably wouldn’t have fended off the pack’s top riders if he wasn’t a GC-caliber rider. Matej Mohoric (Bahrain-Merida) won stage 10 in a late-race attack off the front of the main pack that technically could be argued was a breakaway. Early attempts at an escape were stifled in when the GC teams piled on to gap a struggling Chaves and gobbled up a 12-rider move. Neither were classic long-distance, early-stage groups that fended off the main pack by minutes to the line.
Through 12 stages, there have been four sprints, one time trial, six stages for the GC riders and one wildcard. Even though that’s front-loaded a bit even by Giro standards, that’s not so different than any other grand tour.
What’s different this year is that the Giro is the surprising emergence of Yates. If a rider like Chris Froome (Sky) or Dumoulin were patrolling the front of the bunch knowing they can take big gains in the time trial, more breakaways might have had chances.
Yates, however, knows that he will likely lose minutes to Dumoulin and Froome in Tuesday’s TT, so he’s been trying to pile it on while the iron is hot.
“We are going for the bonuses when we can,” said Mitchelton-Scott sport director Matt White. “We know Simon is going to lose time to Dumoulin in the time trial, so you got to pick up those up when they’re there.”
Time bonuses have spiced up this Giro, but not everyone is a fan. By their very nature, they skew the overall classification. Bonuses favor fast finishers at the expense of bulkier all-rounders or skinny climbers with no kick. It can seem cruel that a rider can gain valuable seconds at the top of a grueling 20-minute summit finish by simply stabbing their bike across the line first just inches ahead of a rival.
Detractors say that a race should be measured on “pure time” and not be adulterated by gimmicky bonuses. A few years ago, the Tour de France eliminated time bonuses based on many of those assumptions. What happened? A relatively dull first week that saw one rider remain in the leader’s jersey until the first major mountains.
here are no easy days at this year's Giro. I don't think anyone predicted that Stage 11 was going to be as decisive as the 2 previous mountaintop finishes on Etna and Gran Sasso. Prior to the race, Simon Yates indicated that Stage 11 was going to be a stage that he was going to try to win and wearing the pink jersey did not stop him from going for it.
The day started out feisty, with scores of riders trying to get in the break. When the dust finally settled some 40 kilometers into the stage, Luis Leon Sanchez and Alessandro de Marchi got free. Fausto Masnada then joined them, proclaiming that no one starts a break without Androni.
Mirco Maestri (Bardiani) and Alex Turrin (Willier) got permission from the Don Giovanni Visconti to chase after them while Sanchez, the Patron Saint of the Break, slowed up his breakmates to let Maestri and Turring join.
It soon became clear, however, that this was not going to be a day for the break as the peloton kept them on a very short leash throughout. The action didn't really kick off until about 5 kilometers from the finish as Tim Wellens and Zdenek Stybar attacked as the peloton was about overtake the remnants from the break on a 16% gradient uphill slope. Wellens and Stybar worked together and opened up a 10 second gap over the charging peloton, but were unable to stay away as they hit the steep cobbled climb to the finish. It was none other than Sanguinaccio Volante himself that powered away from the other riders, with only Tom Dumoulin who was able to stay close. Yates was able to hold off Doom by 2 seconds and take the time bonus on the line. More importantly, Yates took chunks of time from the other GC contenders including 8 seconds from Pozzovivo and Pinot, 18 seconds from Rohan Dennis, 21 seconds from Fabio Aru, 30 seconds from Miguel Angel Lopez, and 40 seconds from Chris Froome, who along with Michael Woods who lost over a minute, were the big losers on the day.
This stage made it clear that the rest of the Giro is going to be a mano-a-mano battle between Yates and Doom.
