Stage 18

The road

At the start

Almeida gone, the sprinters' last chance

João Almeida does not start. Fourth overall and in the white jersey, he has tested positive for COVID-19 and leaves the Giro with three days left. Simon Yates abandoned yesterday too. Richard Carapaz still leads Jai Hindley by three seconds, Mikel Landa by 1:05. Today is the last flat day of the race: 152 kilometres to Treviso, with the Muro di Ca' del Poggio fifty from home.

How it was won

1. 150 km to go

   Four men and two minutes

   Cort, De Bondt, Affini and Gabburo have hovered around two minutes all afternoon on a route everyone read as a bunch sprint. UAE's steady tempo says the sprinters still expect to catch them.

2. 235 km to go

   The chase finally begins

   Rain starts to fall and every sprinter's team throws its riders in — DSM, QuickStep, Groupama-FDJ all committing. The question is whether they have anything left after a week of mountains.

3. 33 km to go

   López caught out again

   The accelerations behind shred the bunch to under forty riders, and one of them catches Juan Pedro López on the wrong side of a split. It will cost him the best part of three minutes and very nearly the white jersey he had only just inherited.

4. 4At the line

   De Bondt times it perfectly

   The four collaborate almost all the way to the line and the sprinters simply run out of road, arriving fourteen seconds late. De Bondt charges past Affini and barely needs to throw the bike — Alpecin-Fenix's third stage of this Giro, and the fast men's last chance gone.

The result