Ten after his last victory in the Giro, Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Soudal) won the 8th stage of the Tour of Italy cycling (WorldTour) disputed on Saturday in Naples over 158 km and favorable to road sprinters. At the start in Naples, the peloton only counted 167 riders. Britain’s Simon Carr (EF Education-EasyPost) was a non-starter.
The Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix) surprised by attacking from the first kilometers in the Neapolitan streets by attacking alone, then joined after twenty kilometers by twenty other riders including three Belgians from Lotto Soudal: Thomas De Gendt, Sylvain Moniquet and Harm Vanhoucke. The gap will never have reached three minutes.
Just over 40 km from the finish, De Gendt and Vanhoucke isolated themselves in the lead with the Spaniard Jorge Arcas (Movistar) and the Italians Davide Gabburo (Bardiani-CSF) and Simone Ravanelli (Drone Hopper-Androni Giocattoli) which dropped a few kilometers further.
The quartet then resisted the return of Van der Poel and Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty Gobert) and Thomas De Gendt was the fastest in the sprint ahead of Gabburo and Arcas to win the 17th success of his career, the first this season.
De Gendt, 35, had not raised his arms on the Giro for ten years and his victory on the 20th stage of the Tour of Italy 2012 where he finished third overall.
In the general classification, the Spaniard Juan Pedro Lopez (Trek-Segafredo) retains the leader’s pink jersey with a 35-second lead over the German Lennard Kamna (Bora-hansgrohe) and 58 seconds over the Estonian Rein Taaramae (Intermarché- Wanty Gobert).
Sunday, this 105th edition of the Giro will offer a more hilly 9th stage of 191km between Isernia and the top of the Blockhaus, on a last first category climb of 13.9 km at 8.4% average. The Tour of Italy will end on May 29 in Verona.