Giro d’Italia 2022 Stage 19 LIVE – Jai Hindley and Mikel Landa bid to unsettle Richard Carapaz in GC

Stay tuned for live comments from Felix Lowe or watch live uninterrupted coverage above from 10:50 BST

STAGE 18 RECAP

Dries De Bondt pulled off a surprise on Thursday as a plucky four-man break defied the peloton and the Belgian took a fine Stage 18 win in Treviso ahead of Italy’s Edoardo Affini, Denmark’s Magnus Cort and Italy’s Davide Gabburo. A thrilling finale saw the teams of the sprinters fail to make the catch as Arnaud Demare and Mark Cavendish were left empty-handed on the last flat finish of the Giro.

De Bondt went shoulder-to-shoulder with Italian time trial specialist Edoardo Affini (Jumbo-Visma) en route to taking a maiden Grand Tour stage win – and a third in the race for his Alpecin-Fenix team after earlier successes for Mathieu van der Poel and Stefano Oldani.

Magnus Cort (EF Education-EasyPost) missed out on an opportunity to complete his set of Grand Tour stage wins, the moustachioed Dane settling for third place ahead of Italy’s Davide Gabburo (Bardiani-CSF).

Local rider Alberto Dainese (Team DSM) led home the remnants of a frustrated peloton 14 seconds in arrears ahead of Frenchman Arnaud Demare (Groupama-FDJ), while Britain’s Mark Cavendish (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl) took eighth place ahead of Colombia’s Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates).

As the teams of the sprinters dug in to try and close a gaping gap of two minutes on the approach to Treviso, a split in the pack caught out over half the field – most notably the white jersey Juan Pedro Lopez (Trek-Segafredo) and German sprinter Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious).

With fewer numbers committed to the chase behind, the leading quartet dug in and combined well over the one and a half laps of the finishing circuit in Treviso to ensure that the final flat finish of the Giro did not go to script.

Entering the last 5km of the 151km stage the escapees still had around 50 seconds to play with, paving the way for De Bondt’s stunning win. Extra drama came from a late puncture for the Australian Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) who crossed the line over a minute down on his pink jersey rival Richard Carapaz (Ineos Grenadiers). But as the incident occurred within the final 3km, Hindley was given the same time as his GC rivals.

Carapaz therefore retained his three-second lead over Hindley ahead of back-to-back summit finishes as the 105th edition of La Corsa Rosa enters its final captivating phase. The only major change in the standings saw the former maglia rosa Lopez – the race’s white jersey following the earlier withdrawal of Portugal’s Joao Almeida following a positive test for Covid-19 – drop one place to ninth after losing almost three minutes at the finish.

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