Pogacar seizes power in the Giro and succeeds Dumoulin with a stage victory over Oropa

NOS Cycling•today, 5:25 PM

Pogacar seizes power in the second Giro stage and takes the pink jersey

Tadej Pogacar has won the second stage of the Giro d’Italia in impressive fashion. The Slovenian, top favorite for the overall victory, waited patiently for the last climb of the day and struck relentlessly.

Pogacar takes over the lead in the general classification from Jhonatan Narváez.

The last kilometers of the stage consisted of a climb to the iconic Santuario di Oropa. In 2017, Tom Dumoulin was the last cyclist to win a stage in the Giro there, in the round that he would eventually win. Now it was Pogacar who soloed to victory there.

The second stage of the Giro had an early break, which consisted of five Italians. Among them was Filippo Fiorelli, who rode in the purple points jersey. However, he only wore it as an ‘occasional wearer’, because the real points leader Narváez was already wearing the pink jersey.

Fiorelli seemed to have only one goal in the ride to Oropa: collecting enough points to take over the lead in the points classification from Narváez. The Italian from Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè succeeded, after which he stopped the fight and allowed himself to be swallowed up by the peloton.

The escapee who lasted the longest was Andrea Piccolo, who escaped alone with 46 kilometers to go. To the delight of the Italian public, he was still in the lead going into the final climb, but he ultimately had to give in and was swallowed up by the ruthless peloton.

Just before the peloton started that final climb to the sanctuary of Oropa, another striking moment occurred. Pogacar suffered a puncture 11 kilometers from the finish and also crashed when the team car approached him.

Pogacar quickly got back on, but was in a poor starting position due to the incident. He had to make a lot of effort to get back into the peloton, which continued to pedal hard when the Slovenian fell.

However, anyone who thought that Pogacar would experience negative consequences from the crash was disappointed. More than 4 kilometers from the finish he started and relentlessly drove away the competition. Only Ben O’Connor seemed to be able to follow briefly, but he soon had to give up.

Pogacar was simply much better than the competition and grabbed the pink jersey in the Tour of Italy. After the powerful solo in the second stage, his lead over the first pursuers in the general classification (Daniel Martinez and Geraint Thomas) is already 45 seconds.

The question is whether there is anyone who can make things difficult for ‘Pogi’ in the coming weeks.