Vingegaard has bad news for Ciccone, who may be left empty-handed after all his hard work

Jonas Vingegaard wants to put the finishing touches on his Giro d’Italia campaign in stage 20 and win on top of Piancavallo. The Dane from Visma | Lease a Bike admitted as much honestly before the start of the stage to Cycling Pro Net. Vingegaard has already won four stages in the Giro, and can make that five. That could also spell bad news for Giulio Ciccone.

Vingegaard had kept questions about more stage wins in the Giro at arm’s length throughout the third week. The pink jersey wearer won stage 16 and essentially put his overall victory beyond doubt. The rest of the Giro was also about energy management, with July’s Tour de France in mind, which Vingegaard also wants to ride and ideally win.

Sepp Kuss therefore got a free hand to go into the breakaway in stage 19, and the American promptly won the stage. Ahead of stage 20, Vingegaard announced that Visma | Lease a Bike would like to add one more stage win, so that on Sunday they can roll into beautiful Rome with six stage wins and the pink jersey.

“I would like to win today,” Vingegaard smiled on Saturday morning. The twentieth stage takes the peloton over Piancavallo twice, a climb of 14.5 kilometres at an average of 7.4 per cent. It is the last test for the Giro peloton, since Sunday will only feature a few flat laps in Rome.

“The most important thing is to keep the pink jersey, but besides that we would like to go for the stage win,” he said honestly. “We are not the only team in the peloton. It is the last day, so it will be a big battle. We have to see whether we can control it. It was already very special that Sepp won on Friday, because he always sacrifices himself for others. We as a team were extremely happy about that.”

Ciccone will have listened to Vingegaard’s interview with disappointment. The Italian took the blue mountains jersey on Friday after a long day in the breakaway, but after the finish he immediately knew he could lose it again to Vingegaard on Saturday. The gap between the two riders before stage 20 was 57 points, but a total of 99 mountain points were on offer in the final mountain stage.

And so Ciccone said on Friday: “Tomorrow will be a different day, and with Vingegaard and Visma | Lease a Bike it can become difficult if they want to go for the stage. It could already go hard on the first passage of Piancavallo, so we have to see how we are going to do that. I need a bit of luck with Jonas.”