Ecuador’s Jhonatan Narvaez continued he and his team’s extraordinary Giro d’Italia with victory on stage 11.<\/p>\n
The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider, 29, beat Spain’s Enric Mas of Movistar over the line.<\/p>\n
Both riders had gone clear of the main breakaway group with about 18km to go of Wednesday’s 195km race to Chiavari near Genoa.<\/p>\n
Italy’s Diego Ulissi finished third for XDS-Astana.<\/p>\n
Narvaez’s form has been a boots to the UAE team, who lost three of their strongest riders – including Britain’s Adam Yates – on stage two in Bulgaria.<\/p>\n
The trio were forced to abandon the three-week race following a harrowing crash in heavy rain – with Yates, the team’s hope for the pink jersey, left concussed and covered in mud and blood, after colliding with an Armco barrier.<\/p>\n
Australia’s Jay Vine also retired with concussion and Spain’s Marc Soler with a pelvic fracture – both were taken to hospital.<\/p>\n
The team’s response was to try to win stages and – alongside Spaniard Igor Arrieta’s brilliant battling win in the rain on stage five – Narvaez has excelled on all terrain so far, using strength in sprints and showing too much for his opponents on both short and longer climbs. <\/p>\n
Narvaez explained afterwards he had twice missed other riders breaking away from the peloton early on, and had to bridge over to the front group – which requires a huge amount of energy to ride alone in the wind.<\/p>\n
“Mas is stronger than me on the climbs,” said Narvaez. “I remember a book I was reading [which said]: ‘If you don’t have the game, make your own game.’ <\/p>\n
“You will not see Michael Phelps [running], he’s especially for the [swimming] pool – so I just tried to defend myself.”<\/p>\n
Narvaez is expected to re-sign for his former team, Britain’s Netcompany Ineos Cycling, in 2027, as they look to add to their squad following new investment.<\/p>\n
Portugal’s Afonso Eulalio unexpectedly remains in the overall lead following a quiet day for the peloton, and will contest and seventh day in pink on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike, favourite to win the pink jersey when the race reaches its end in Rome on 31 May, is second overall, 27 seconds down.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Britain’s 18-year-old junior road world champion Harry Hudson has suffered a fractured vertebra following in a training incident.<\/p>\n
He posted on social media: “Just over a week ago while training in Girona I was hit on a descent by a motorbike and had a pretty scary crash.<\/p>\n
“After 24 hours in hospital I was released. I’m now at home recovering.”<\/p>\n
Britain’s Lewis Askey, 25, of NSN Cycling, finished third in the first stage of the Fours Days of Dunkerque race in France. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ecuador’s Jhonatan Narvaez continued he and his team’s extraordinary Giro d’Italia with victory on stage 11. The UAE…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-594825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}