TADEJ POGACAR TIGHTENED his grip on the Giro d’Italia on Saturday winning the 152km mountainous stage eight over rolling terrain for his third success of this year’s race.
A day after claiming the lengthy individual time-trial in Perugia, the 25-year-old Team UAE leader paced himself up the 14km final climb along with an elite clique before producing his trademark late kick to the 1,425m altitude finish line in the Abruzzo region.
Pogacar also won the second stage, a summit finish at the Sanctuary of Oropa in Piedmont.
In his bid to win the Giro and Tour de France in the same season he now leads by almost 3mins on title rivals Dani Martinez and Geraint Thomas who were close behind on the second mountain stage in the 21-day race.
The Slovenian is taking part in the Giro for the first time and hopes to emulate Italy’s Marco Pantani who won the double in 1998.
The race continues Sunday with a largely flat 214km stage nine to the southern port city of Naples on a route open to attacks from the same kind of one-day specialists that lit up stage six on the Tuscan gravel.
Dutch outfit Visma lost another of their chief riders to injury when Christophe Laporte failed to show up for the start. He fell hard when hitting a gutter on stage five.
The Visma team are reeling from injuries to double Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard and one day expert Wout van Aert.
