Gee-West extremely grateful to hard-charging INEOS duo: 'They were ripping it'

Derek Gee-West was one of the losers of the Bulgarian opening weekend at the Giro d'Italia, having already dropped a minute in the brutal stage two crash. On Tuesday's stage four he very nearly lost more time, when the Canadian Lidl-Trek leader punctured on the descent. All the damage was repaired — and afterwards he had Netcompany INEOS to thank for it.

Like so many others, Gee-West was caught up in the large-scale crash on the wet descent on Saturday. The race was briefly neutralised, but the Canadian ultimately had to pay a minute in time losses. He refused to panic, though. "I'm quite battered, but it's not that bad," he said before the start of stage three. "When I see how some of the other guys are doing, I've been lucky. I'm sore pretty much everywhere — the hip is quite bad, the back a bit... I fell really hard, so it's mostly bruising. A minute of time loss — I'm used to that. I just hope it won't matter much in the end. Monday's rest day comes at a good time."

After the rest day came that tricky fourth stage, with its long climb. Gee-West came through the Cozzo Tunno well — but on the descent, trouble struck. "Really unfortunate timing on that one," he told TNT Sports afterwards. "I thought that was going to be another minute gone." It was not, though — the Canadian managed to fight his way back.

That was largely thanks to a Netcompany INEOS duo. "Luckily Egan [Bernal] was back there, along with Ben Turner. They were really ripping it to come back." That made for a tense stretch of racing: Gee couldn't ease up "right up until we were back on. Even closing those last couple of seconds was absolutely full gas."

At the very end of that pursuit, help also arrived from his own camp, in the form of Matteo Sobrero. "Luckily he had Matteo able to drop back and close that last little bit. But that was a hard chase," a breathless Gee-West said. He was well aware that it had ultimately been a remarkable day, with Giulio Ciccone pulling on the pink jersey.

"That's really special," he said with clear admiration for his teammate. "How much that means to Giulio... the pink jersey means a lot to everyone in this race, but to hear him talking about it on the bus this morning and to know it was a realistic goal — it was super cool to pull that off."