5 hours ago
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Mads Pedersen won his fourth stage of this year’s Giro d’Italia when he sprinted to victory on Friday’s stage 13, beating Wout van Aert to the line while Isaac del Toro maintained his overall lead to retain the maglia rosa.
As the riders neared the finish of the 180km ride from Rovigo to Vicenza, Pedersen was fourth when he launched his bid for victory on the uphill sprint as Van Aert stayed close on his wheel. Del Toro had done well to earn bonus seconds in the intermediate sprint but the 21-year-old did not have the legs to challenge the sprint heavyweights as he settled for third, leaving Pedersen and Van Aert to battle it out for victory.
Ultimately, it was Pedersen who powered through to the finish and take the win by less than a bike’s length, even as Van Aert tried his best to make a last-ditch lunge to overtake him.
“What an incredible Giro this is. Timing my effort was dictated by instinct. I had to open up on the right side close to the barriers. So I went a bit earlier than I wanted to,” Pedersen said. “On such a hard day and a finale like this, everyone has burning legs in the finale. It was definitely nice to have seen it before. I’m happy with this win and adding another 50 points for the maglia ciclamino [the sprinters’ purple jersey]. I’m overwhelmed with winning again.”
On a stage with several breakaways that did not come to fruition, it was Romain Bardet of Picnic-PostNL who looked for the win when he attacked on the twisting and turning downhill section near the end. He was joined by Lidl-Trek’s Mathias Vacek as the pair stormed into a 17sec lead with four kilometres left. But two kilometres later, that lead was cut to 10sec and they could not keep the chasers at bay with less than a kilometre left on the final climb, as the Alpecin-Deceuninck team led the charge.
“We first tried to win the stage with Mathias Vacek. He deserves to get his chance too,” Pedersen added. “If there was a hesitation in the peloton, Romain Bardet and him would have had the possibility to win. It was ideal, I could sit behind and let other teams work.”
That was when Pedersen accelerated to beat Van Aert while Del Toro finished third, two seconds behind after nearly four hours of racing. However, Del Toro now leads his UAE Team Emirates teammate Juan Ayuso by 38sec in the general classification while Antonio Tiberi of Bahrain Victorious is 1min 18sec behind.
