Jai Hindley has roared again in the \u201cpinnacle of cycling\u201d, making history as just the second Australian to enjoy three overall podium finishes in Grand Tours as he rode home for a valiant third place in the Giro d\u2019Italia.<\/p>\n
As new champion Jonas Vingegaard confirmed his place among the sport\u2019s all-time elite in Rome by completing his set of the three Grand Tour triumphs and dominating the 109th Giro with five magnificent stage wins, Hindley underlined why he is one of Australia\u2019s greatest.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old had been ill during the race, needing to take antibiotics in the second of the three weeks, yet recovered spectacularly to complete his own set of Giro podium finishes, having won in 2022, been runner-up in 2021 and now third.<\/p>\n
Only the great former Tour de France winner Cadel Evans has had more Grand Tour podium finishes among Australians, with five.<\/p>\n
The often unsung Perth rider Hindley said on the eve of the race from Bulgaria that he and his Red Bull BORA-hansgrohe team \u201caren\u2019t here to lick stamps\u201d. That was his 2026 version of his famous but bewildering affirmation \u201cwe\u2019re not here to put socks on centipedes\u201d in the year he won.<\/p>\n
The translation was that he and his team weren\u2019t once again there to mess around, and after he proved stronger over the race than his talented young co-team leader Giulio Pellizzari to assume the role of main man, Hindley lived up to his promise.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second week was very hard for me, I was really quite sick. I even had to take antibiotics, but I seem to be back in time,\u201d Hindley had smiled after a remarkable third-week resurgence saw him move into third place overall on the 19th of the 21 stages.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the largely processional ride into the capital ended with Italian Jonathan Milan winning the final-stage sprint and Vingegaard clinching his fourth Grand \u200cTour, having twice won the Tour de France and last year\u2019s Vuelta, where Hindley had signalled he was recovering his best form with a fourth-place finish.<\/p>\n
Hindley did suffer a mechanical mid-race on Sunday but swiftly got back to the peloton. He ended 6 minutes 25 seconds behind Vingegaard, and 1:03 behind runner-up, Austrian Felix Gall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t had a good result in a Grand Tour for a long time, and to be fighting for the podium again was really nice,\u201d said Hindley. \u201cFor me, the Grand Tours are the pinnacle of cycling, and being competitive in them is what I train for.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was only the second Giro in a decade in which there wasn\u2019t a stage won by an Australian, following the early abandonments of the luckless Kaden Groves<\/a> and Jay Vine with crashes<\/a>, but, impressively, there were four Australian finishers in the top 17.<\/p>\n Michael Storer (Tudor Pro) finished a career-best seventh at 10:13 down, Ben O\u2019Connor (Jayco AlUla) was 16th at 24:12 and Chris Harper (Pinarello Q36.5 Pro) 17th at 30:43.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jai Hindley has roared again in the \u201cpinnacle of cycling\u201d, making history as just the second Australian to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-614882","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\/614882","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=614882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}