April 23, 2026
While today's stage is 6 km shorter, the riders will likely be on the bike quite a bit longer because of the difficult climbing in store. When the riders leave Arco near the Northern shores of the Lago di Garda, they take probably the most difficult route possible. After just 8 km of racing, the riders will ascend the 15 km, 7% category one test of the Passo Bordala. After a steep descent, there is little respite because the next climb of Vigolo Vattaro, which is cruelly uncategorized, quickly follows and is 8.4 km at 6%. There is a 5 km descent from the top which is followed by another category one climb, the Passo Redebus, a 13 km ascent at 6.7%. The summit of the Passo Redebus is almost exactly halfway through the stage with just a few smaller climbs to come. 45 km from the finish, the riders will pass through Brusago after a 4.7 km climb at 7%. The rest of the stage rolls down towards the finish in Trento with three rises, all between 1-3 km in length, before they cross the line. The climbing has been front-loaded in the stages this week which has resulted in larger groups coming to the finish together and it's hard to see the GC group splitting up too much today either.
Race Summary
It was another blue bird day at the start and spirits were high with riders chatting before the flag waived at KM0. A group of five broke away and with 64 km to go near the end of the descent off the Passo Redebus, Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe were leading a relatively large peloton at 3 minutes 15 seconds behind the leaders. The five riders that comprised the break were Rainer Kepplinger of Bahrain Victorious, Sean Quinn of EF-Education EasyPost, Chris Juul Jensen of Jayco AlUla, Lennart Jasch of Tudor Pro Cycling, and Simone Raccani of Team UKYO.
Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe continued to ride reasonably hard to keep things in check for race leader Giulio Pellizzari and were getting help from Pinarello Q36.5. With 55 km to go, the gap was down to just a hair over 2 minutes as they climbed up to the village of Segonzano and through the terraced vineyards. When the break turned onto the rise up to Brusago, Kepplinger and Jasch dropped the others and were still roughly 2 minutes ahead of the peloton. Kepplinger was next to drop back, leaving just Jasch at the front of the race with 47 km to go and 3.5 km to the top in Brusago.
With the exception of Quinn, the dropped contingent of the break had coalesced and hung around 15 seconds behind Jasch. The downhill off of Brusago was more of a pedaling descent and Jasch was rejoined by Juul Jensen, Raccani, and Kepplinger. The peloton, particularly Pinarello Q36.5, believed there was another stage win up for grabs and focused their attention fully on the chasing efforts.
When the break reached the climb to Sant'Agnese with 25 km to go, their gap was cut down to just 50 seconds. As soon as the road started to rise, Jasch went on the attack with no real reaction from the others. Near the top of Sant'Agnese, Jasch still had about 1 minute but the attacking was started in the peloton by Juan Felipe Rodriguez of EF-Education EasyPost, employing a similar tactic to yesterday. Rodriguez bridged up to Juul Jensen, Raccani, and Kepplinger with 15 km to go. At this point, they were 40 seconds behind Jasch with the Pinarello Q36.5 squad leading the peloton another 15 seconds behind.
Juul Jensen was able to follow Rodriguez on the second hill and were closing in on Jasch at just 30 seconds with 12 km to go. 1,200 meter later, Jasch crossed a bridge over a ravine and started the final kicker up to Povo and the Bonus sprint before the descent into Trento. Pinarello Q36.5 ran out of men which left Tom Pidcock to ride on the front for his own chances. The Brit was a sitting duck and attacks came from behind from race leader Giulio Pellizzari of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe who was immediately followed by Egan Bernal of Ineos and Jakub Omrzel of Bahrain Victorious. The push from the favorites was so strong that Juul Jensen and Rodriguez were both caught before the Bonus sprint at the top in Povo. Jasch crested the climb first to take the 6 seconds but the stage win was the only thing on the German's mind. Behind, Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe sent Aleksandr Vlasov up the road to take 4 seconds with Bernal following to take 2 seconds.
When Vlasov led the favorites group across the Bonus sprint in Povo with 9.5 km to go, there were 25 seconds behind Jasch. The favorites group numbered around 25 riders and no one really wanted to spend the energy to tow the group into the finish. There were a few attacks when the momentum stalled and the first to break the elastic was Matteo Sobrero of Lidl-Trek and Federico Iacomoni of Team UKYO. With 4 km to go, a teammate came back for Pidcock and immediately went to the front of the favorites group but they had drifted to nearly 30 seconds behind Jasch. Sobrero and Iacomoni got within 15 seconds but Jasch had them matched and kept his advantage through 1,500 meters to go. Sobrero and Iacomoni were working well until 1 km to go when Sobrero hesitated and skipped his pull. Jasch turned himself inside out and entered the finish straight with 400 meters to go and a gap big enough to sit up and celebrate the biggest win of his career. Sobrero took the sprint for second ahead of Iacomoni in third at 10 seconds. Florian Stock of Tudor Pro Cycling came across the line first from the favorites group a further 10 seconds later.
The top 10 in GC didn't materially change with Pellizzari leading the Ineos duo of Arensman and Bernal. There are eleven riders still within 30 seconds of the race lead which should set up a blockbuster finale on tomorrow's last stage.