Jhonatan Narv\u00e1ez powered away from his breakaway rivals to win stage eight of the Giro d\u2019Italia on Saturday for his second victory and a third for the injury-decimated UAE Team Emirates XRG.<\/p>\n
Adam Yates, Jay Vine and Marc Soler have all been forced out of the Giro after a gruesome stage three pile up in Bulgaria, but the super-team from the Emirates has refocused impressively.<\/p>\n
A rolling 156km stage starting from Chieti on the Adriatic seemed to favour a breakaway win. Narv\u00e1ez, the Ecuadorian rider who had already won stage four in a sprint<\/a>, was part of a breakaway midway through the day after an original escape had been reeled in. He opened a 32-second gap at the line on Norway\u2019s Andreas Leknessund, of Uno-X Mobility, with another UAE man, Mikkel Bjerg, third.<\/p>\n Afonso Eul\u00e1lio, who grabbed a sizeable lead on stage five, still heads the general classification ahead of Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> and Felix Gall.<\/p>\n Narvaez paid tribute to his teammate Bjerg, thanking the Dane for driving the breakaway to set up a decisive attack on the penultimate climb where the Ecuadorean distanced Leknessund, with Bjerg crossing the line 16th.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a nice stage for me. I think we played well, with my teammate. He was the man of the day, Mikkel Bjerg and always working for the team,\u201d Narvaez said. \u201cIn the end it was about the legs. The first part, the full headwind, on the flat, was really hard. But we never gave up. With 60k to go we rode well, we rode smart and we had the opportunity to go for the stage.\u201c<\/p>\n