Paul Magnier of Soudal Quick-Step\u00a0completed a hat-trick of \u00advictories in this Giro d\u2019Italia in a bunch sprint on stage 18 in the Veneto town of Pieve di Soligo.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old was perfectly set up by his teammate Jasper Stuyven in the final few high-speed turns and powered to the line after 171km of\u00a0\u00adracing, ahead of two Italian sprinters.<\/p>\n
Edoardo Zambanini \u00ad(Bahrain \u00adVictorious) was second with \u00adJonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) third on an \u00adundulating stage that began in Fai della Paganella in Trentino. Victory for Magnier, who also won the first and third stages, in Bulgaria, means he takes the lead in the points classification.<\/p>\n
Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease A Bike), the overall race leader, attacked on the day\u2019s short sharp final climb inside the final 10km, but\u00a0\u00adsettled for a place in the main bunch to \u00adpreserve his big advantage. The Dane is attempting to complete the set of Grand Tour triumphs and leads Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) by 4min 03sec with three stages left.<\/p>\n
The stage came alive after a four-man break of Mattia Bais, Andrea Mifsud (both Polti-VisitMalta), Jonas Geens (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and James Shaw (EF Education-EasyPost) was caught with around 25km to go.<\/p>\n
The 1.1km Il Muro di Ca\u2019 del \u00adPoggio ramp, with gradients of 19%, provided a sharp sting in the tail and for a while it looked like Vingegaard might go for the stage win.<\/p>\n
Jonas Vingegaard in pink among the peloton passing a vineyards from Fai della Paganella to Pieve di Soligo. Photograph: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Afonso Eul\u00e1lio (Bahrain \u00adVictorious), who recovered from a crash, also sensed an opportunity. But it was a day for the sprinters and Soudal Quick-Step played the perfect hand as Stuyven led Magnier into the final tricky corner, giving his teammate the perfect line for his final burst of acceleration to the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a lot of confidence this morning,\u201d said Magnier, who also wore the race leader\u2019s Maglia Rosa jersey after his earlier stage wins. \u201cMy teammates made it into a sprint and I\u2019m so happy to win. Jasper made an amazing lead-out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Magnier of Soudal Quick-Step\u00a0completed a hat-trick of \u00advictories in this Giro d\u2019Italia in a bunch sprint on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-700882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}