Aurélien Paret-Peintre, Davide Bais, Ben Healy, Magnus Cort and… Nico Denz. The German gave a breakaway the fifth victory so far in the Giro, Very high loot if we take into account that of the twelve stages disputed so far, two were against the clock. If we take them out of the equation, 50% success for jailbreaks in online stages after success of a Denz who added the 40th victory for Germany in Giro history (two in this round with Ackermann’s).
The twelfth stage also confirmed, for the third consecutive day, Geraint Thomas as pink jersey. A Thomas, who equaled fellow countryman Chris Froome in number of days as leader of the Corsa Pink, whose objective is none other than to keep it tomorrow on the first day of real demand for the men of the general classification: “I hope everything is fine tomorrow in Switzerland (about the weather) and I can defend the pink jersey in the same way that I won the Tour de Suisse before. Tomorrow will be the first big test. We have to face what lies ahead.”
And it is that the stage will pass mostly through Swiss territory that brings back good memories for the Welshman, when he won the 2022 Tour of Switzerland, the last general of his record to date. Already without the trump card of Tao Geoghegan as lieutenant, Thomas entrusts himself to Sivakov as a great squire: “Obviously, Pavel Sivakov rode very well today despite his accident yesterday. He is definitely in good shape. The team took a hit yesterday, but we recovered well. We have to adapt to the race, like today, with 30 km to go, Pavel stopped all the attacks.” The moment of truth has come.