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Did Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe want to keep Primoz Roglič in the leader’s jersey in the Giro d’Italia on stage 8, or did they prefer to let it go?
The question was widely debated by Giro followers after Roglič’s team opted to chase down some of the early moves on the very hilly stage, but finally allowed an important break to go clear.
While Luke Plapp (Jayco-AlUla) won the stage from a lone attack with 42 kilometres to go, veteran Italian Diego Ulissi (XDS Astana) finished just close enough behind to move into the overall lead, with teammate Lorenzo Fortunato in second. Roglič, meanwhile, has now dropped to third at 17 seconds.
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Red Bull’s sports director Christian Pömer explained later to Cyclingnews and the CyclingPodcast that their main idea had been to let a break go but to try to keep any potential GC threats like Romain Bardet (Picnic-PostNL) – who was on the attack all day – on as short a leash as possible.
Bardet finally made it into a breakaway, but it was much later than his initial move. It was not so big as to perhaps create a rerun of the scenario Red Bull faced with Ben O’Connor in the Vuelta a España last year. Last September, the Australian gained five minutes from a seemingly inoffensive first week escape and then became a major threat to Roglič’s domination of the Vuelta overall long-term.
“The reality is the plan this morning in the bus was for a small group with no real GC contenders in it [to move ahead] on the road for the entire stage,” Pömer explained.
“We knew it would be a hard one to control, and actually, this is exactly what happened. It was a monster stage.”
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Pömer explained that one early break had been too big and had contained dangerous GC riders such as Bardet, and no way were Red Bull going to let a similar situation arise like last year’s Vuelta. As Pömer put it slightly grimly – “We learned our lesson there.” Hence, the chasing down of one break initially, but then letting a later move go clear later on.
It was true that Bardet had been slightly injured on Friday, hurting his knee. But as Pömer said, not knowing whether Bardet was specially motivated for a particular reason on stage 8 – ‘We don’t know if his grandmother died while we were in Albania, or if his dog died or if his wife gave birth to their child and [as a result] he has superpowers, you never know’, he said jokingly – meant they could not afford to take risks.
“For you guys on the couch or on the computer keyboard, cycling strategy is always easy,” he added. “But the reality is it’s like [former rider and Vuelta a España winner] Chris Horner’s Youtube Channel, The Butterfly Effect’, meaning that one tiny event in one place can have an indirect but colossal impact on another, and there is no way of telling when or if that’ll happen.
“You never know. So we wanted to have Bardet at least a bit under control.
“That was why there was not too much of a gap. The rest was done by race dynamics.
“So we gave the jersey away on purpose, and actually, we hoped the [last] break would gain a little bit more time. But then UAE started to pull at the end, maybe because they wanted us to keep the jersey.
“The answer in any case is a clear no, we didn’t want to have the jersey and yesterday” – when Roglič moved back into pink on the Tagliacozzo summit finish – “we didn’t want it either.”
A balancing act
The one major concern over this strategy, Pömer said, was to maintain a balancing act regarding the time given to the break. Let them gain too much time and Red Bull risked a problem with the team car order on a crucial stage across the gravel roads of Tuscany on Sunday. Don’t give them enough time, though, then the break wouldn’t stick and Roglič would still be in pink, which Red Bull didn’t want either.
“That was actually our biggest concern, not to drift too far back GC-wise because normally the barrage on a stage is always for three cars, so when you are in the first three [on GC], you are fine.”
Roglič’s team will now be in second place, behind XDS Astana, so the situation is ideal, Pömer said. But ensuring it worked out that way was no easy task.
“We had an OK day, although for the riders it was a super-hard day, and now we have what we want,” he concluded. “And now tomorrow we’ll see what happens.”
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