The Giro d’Italia’s first summit finish at Roccaraso proved more selective than anyone anticipated but, as is so often the case at this juncture of a three-week race, the haul through the Apennines still produced more questions than answers.
That said, the greatest conundrum since the start of this Giro – is Tom Dumoulin a viable contender for overall victory? – is a little closer to a resolution on Thursday evening after the maglia rosa’s confident attack with a little over three kilometres remaining, a move later joined by Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha) and Domenico Pozzovivo (Ag2r-La Mondiale). The Giant-Alpecin man put another 14 seconds into Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and another 21 into Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) and Mikel Landa (Sky).
Valverde, Nibali and Landa, the three pre-race favourites, are now already 41 seconds, 47 seconds and 1:08, respectively, behind Dumoulin. With the Chianti time trial still to come on stage 9, those gaps could be doubled – or more – by the time the race resumes on Tuesday after the rest day in Tuscany.
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Regardless of whether Dumoulin views himself as a possible winner or not, the rest of the podium contenders had better start treating him as such and trying to find ways to discommode him long before the high mountains of the third week. After all, with so many stages climbing above 2,000 metres during the last throes of the Alpine spring, if the extreme weather protocol is rolled out, they could effectively run out of road.
All that is hypothetical, of course. In the here and now, Dumoulin is gamely insisting that he is living day by day, though his dismissals of the prospect of a podium place in Turin were notably softer in Roccaraso on Thursday evening. “Maybe the energy I’m using here will cost me in the last week, but the seconds I take now could help me in the last week, too,” he said.
Not the words of a man ready to lay down arms just yet.
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