Giro di Sardegna: Filippo Zana takes home overall victory as Davide Donati speeds to final stage win

It was double Italian victory in the Giro di Sardegna on Sunday, with Filippo Zana (Soudal-QuickStep) sealing the GC title after his Queen stage triumph, whilst Davide Donati (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rookies) conquered the final sprint.

Donati came out on top in a tight photo finish in Olbia, beating Davide Persico (MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort) into second, whilst Tilen Finkšt (Solution Tech Nippo Rali) took third.

Zana, who took over the race lead with his stage 4 win, finished safely in the group to confirm his GC victory, his first major result since moving to Soudal-QuickStep over the winter.

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“It’s nice to come here and for sure nice to win the race,” Zana said. “It was a nice five days here in Sardinia and now we are ready for the next races and the Giro [d’Italia].”

The final stage of the Giro di Sardegna started with an 18km, but then was downhill or flat after that, and whilst a couple of solo breakaway riders attempted to shake things up, it was always going to be a sprint finish in Olbia.

On the Valico di Su Pradu climb that opened proceedings, and handful riders went on the attack, but only one actually went clear over the top, with Riccardo Perani (Beltrami TSA Tre Colli) building a lead of four minutes in the first 60km of racing.

Rather than keep him close, the peloton let Perani build a gap that was over six minutes at one point, and five and a half minutes with 50km to go – the Italian started the day some 29 minutes down, so was never a GC threat.

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However, the bunch did eventually perk up and chase him down, and he was swallowed up with 17km to go after a long day out front. Diego Uriarte (Equipo Kern Pharma) attacked with 15km to go, and built a gap of 15 seconds, briefly looking as if he might disrupt the sprint, but he was brought back with 2km to go and the bunch contested the finale as expected.

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