Four-man breakaway on the road to Naples<\/p>\n
After the scenic and prestigious start in Paestum, the impression was that nobody really had the desire or motivation to go on the attack. But after around ten kilometres, Edward Planckaert and Luca Vergallito (Alpecin\u2013Deceuninck) lit the fuse, and a few kilometres later they were joined by Martin Marcellusi, Manuele Tarozzi (VF Group Bardiani\u2013CSF Faizan\u00e8) and Mattia Bais (Team Polti VisitMalta).<\/p>\n
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The stage unfolded fairly smoothly, with the breakaway never managing to stretch its advantage beyond one minute, while the GC favourites stayed safely tucked near the back of the peloton to avoid trouble through the many towns crossed by the route. With thousands of fans lining the roads to show their support, the breakaway was reeled in 36 km from the finish, while Filippo Magli (VF Group Bardiani\u2013CSF Faizan\u00e8) claimed the Red Bull KM, and a quietly opportunistic Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto) picked up 2 bonus seconds that certainly won\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n
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This set up the much-anticipated sprint finish in central Naples \u2014 the fourth consecutive sprint, but the first ever in Piazza del Plebiscito. Unibet Tietema Rockets had executed everything to perfection until the final corner with 400 metres to go, when Elmar Reinders touched the brakes on the slippery cobbles and crashed, taking down Dylan Groenewegen, then Jonathan Milan, and many others.<\/p>\n
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On the inside line, Davide Ballerini and Jasper Stuyven managed to avoid the carnage. Originally meant to lead out Matteo Malucelli and Paul Magnier respectively, they instead found themselves battling for the stage win. In the end, it was the rider from Cant\u00f9 who came out on top, handing Italy its first victory of this edition. Further back, it was minimum risk and maximum reward for Afonso Eul\u00e1lio (Bahrain Victorious), who safely held onto the Maglia Rosa and now prepares for tomorrow\u2019s test of endurance on Blockhaus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four-man breakaway on the road to Naples After the scenic and prestigious start in Paestum, the impression was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-669836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}