Greig Leach

The early five man break had the mathematical rule of thumb on their side today. The standard thinking on all but a mountain stage is that the break needs a minute on the peloton for every ten kilometes left to race. By that standard, this break away of Simone Andreetta (Bardiani-CSF), Lukas Postlberger (Bora-Hansgrohe), Silvan Dillier (BMC) and both Mads Pedersen and Jasper Stuyven with Trek-Segafredo, were going to make it all the way to the line. The quintet had five minutes and one second on the group of Maglia Rosa and they had only 50.1 kilometers left to go.