Journalist raises concern over Pellizzari's Giro future: 'You could sort of see it coming'

Monday is the second rest day of the Giro d'Italia, which means the first part of the race is now truly behind us. Sunday's mountain test gave plenty to talk about, and Thijs Zonneveld does so with relish. The Dutch journalistwatched Giulio Pellizzari run into trouble on Sunday — and he wasn't impressed.

The young Italian from Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe had been widely tipped as one of Jonas Vingegaard's main challengers, but took a significant blow on stage nine on Sunday. Pellizzari started to struggle early on the final climb and ultimately finished nearly a minute and a half down on his Danish rival.

Zonneveld found it all rather remarkable. "It was a bit strange, what he did," he said on the Dutch-language In De Waaier podcast. "You could sort of see it coming. Blockhaus was fairly okay, but he took a mental knock because he couldn't stay with Vingegaard."

Zonneveld went as far as calling Pellizzari's behaviour immature. "What's immature about what he did today is this: he's clearly not feeling well, or he's coming down with something. He's definitely not right. And when you're not right and you drop to the back of a group of 40 or 50 riders — even with a teammate alongside you — you give other riders a reason to attack."

What should he have done instead? "If he had stayed in that group and kept fighting for his position — which he was capable of — there's a chance that a team like Decathlon or Visma | Lease a Bike might have held off, or even not bothered to put the hammer down at all. As a GC rider, you're obviously going to have days when you're not feeling your best."

"When you're having one of those days and you drift to the back of the group, right in front of the cameras, feeling sorry for yourself — you're going to get punished faster than if you'd tried to hide it. I thought what they did was rather immature, to be honest. You can see that he actually made back some time in the end... but sometimes it's about digging in and fighting to hold your position."

That said, Zonneveld didn't think the result would have been much better regardless. "If [Felix] Gall had attacked, he would have been dropped anyway. As it was, he'd already been shelled and he gave Decathlon a reason to push even harder. When a team sees a rival is having a bad day, they want to make it hurt as much as possible."

And so his conclusion: "This doesn't bode well for Pellizzari — because this wasn't even the hardest day of the Giro." Does that mean the Giro is now without a real contender to challenge Vingegaard? "Under normal circumstances, the Pellizzari–Vingegaard dynamic would have looked a bit like the Gall–Vingegaard dynamic does now. In that sense, it's not all that different — there was always really just one big favourite. But if the race is now headless — did it ever really have a head to begin with?"