Moustacheless Vingegaard and Visma | Lease a Bike have good news for the Giro peloton

The most eye-catching news at the start of stage 17 in the Giro d'Italia was undoubtedly Jonas Vingegaard turning up in the mixed zone surrounded by journalists without his moustache and matching goatee. The pink jersey wearer from Visma | Lease a Bike had been sporting a growing moustache throughout the Giro, but on Wednesday he suddenly appeared clean-shaven .

Eurosport asked Vingegaard why he had gone for the shave. "Well... I looked in the mirror yesterday and thought I looked like a teenager because of the moustache. It had to go," the Dane smiled, as he heads towards overall victory in the Giro. On Tuesday he had already dominated stage 16, moustache and all.

Without the moustache, Vingegaard was able to enjoy a fairly calm stage on Wednesday, which turned out to be one for the breakaway. Fellow Dane Michael Valgren won, and that pleased Vingegaard. "I did ask a few times about the situation up front, and when I heard Michael had won, I was very, very happy," he said in the mixed zone.

It was also a good day for Visma | Lease a Bike in breakaway terms, because Damiano Caruso was up the road and could potentially have done something in the GC. "At a moment like that there is not much communication. The break goes, and when it turns out Caruso is in it, you start controlling" .

Vingegaard and Visma | Lease a Bike then knew exactly how to play it towards the finale. "You give them 5, 6 or 7 minutes and then there are always teams that come to defend their GC places. That is logical." Tudor and Jayco AlUla eventually came to the front of the bunch. Caruso nevertheless climbed to ninth overall .

Thanks to the breakaway, stage 17 was relatively straightforward for Vingegaard and the GC riders. A similar scenario is expected again on Thursday in stage 18. Friday and Saturday will then bring two days of heavy climbing.

Could that be a chance for Vingegaard to put the finishing touches on the race? With four stage wins already in the bag, the answer came with a knowing smile. "It would be nice to win those last two mountain stages too, but I am not expecting that. They will be two very hard stages, and as I said earlier: there is also a race in July that I want to do, and I already went quite deep in stage 16".

The Giro d'Italia remains, then, a race to be won rather than one to attack flat out every day. "I would like to win, but sometimes you have to think about what is still to come. I do sometimes think about the Tour de France, in the sense that I do not want to kill myself completely here, if that is possible".

And so Vingegaard repeated the words he had already said after his stage 16 victory: with team-mate Davide Piganzoli close to the white young rider jersey, the Dane said, "It does not matter to me how many stages I win. If Davide has the level, I would give up a stage for his white jersey".