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Giro d'Italia: Simon Yates moves closer to overall win after time trial

World time trial champion Tom Dumoulin only third today, Chris Froome moves up to fourth overall

Simon Yates has taken a huge step towards clinching the overall victory at the Giro d'Italia this afternoon, as he rode the time trial of his life while his closest rival, the defending champion Tom Dumoulin, still lies almost a minute behind him in second place overall.

The win today went to Rohan Dennis of BMC Racing, with former world champion Tony Martin of Katusha-Alpecin second., who unlike Team Sunweb rider Dumoulin have been able to conserve their energy for this stage.

The current wearer of the rainbow jersey was widely seen as having a strong opportunity to get into the overall lead on today's 34.2-kilometre course from Trento to Rovereto.

The penultimate rider on the course, Dumoulin began the time trial 2 minutes 11 seconds down on Mitchelton-Scott rider Yates himself had said he might lose as much as 4 seconds a kilometre to the Dutchman.

That would have been enough for Dumoulin to take a narrow lead, but he only managed to take a minute and a quarter out of the Britain, who still leads by 56 seconds.

After the stage, Yates said: “I'm really happy. I felt good in the first half. I had a good rhythm. I was trying to hold on to my position. But I died in the final 10 kilometres.

"Being in the lead after the time trial changes my tactics for the remaining stages. Unfortunately for the fans, I might be more defensive.

"I'd like to have a bigger gap but I'm very satisfied with where I stand now.”

There are still some tough mountain stages to come ahead of a sprinter-friendly stage in Rome on Sunday, but barring disaster,  the 25-year-old from Bury appears to be heading towards a maiden Grand Tour victory.

Chris Froome of Team Sky, meanwhile, is back in the hunt for a podium place after finishing fifth today, putting him third on the podium behind Yates, Dumoulin and Bahrain-Merida's Domenico Pozzovivo.

Froome wasn't the only British rider in the top 10 today, with Katusha-Alpecin's Alex Dowsett - a time trial stage winner at the 2013 Giro d'Italia, when he rode for Movistar - seventh today.

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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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5 comments

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captain_slog | 5 years ago
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It'll be interesting to see what happens now. Will his rivals still think it worth trying to overhaul Yates? If not, he could get away for another stage win when the other GC contenders mark each other rather than risk their position by chasing.

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RobD replied to captain_slog | 5 years ago
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captain_slog wrote:

It'll be interesting to see what happens now. Will his rivals still think it worth trying to overhaul Yates? If not, he could get away for another stage win when the other GC contenders mark each other rather than risk their position by chasing.

Depending on how he's feeling the rest of the week I could see Froome having a decent chance at 3rd place, he's very unlikely to catch the front two so they may well let him go and make the guys behind them do some work.

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Yorkshire wallet | 5 years ago
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I see Pinot got hammered again in the TT. Never win a grand tour with that problem .

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RobD replied to Yorkshire wallet | 5 years ago
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Yorkshire wallet wrote:

I see Pinot got hammered again in the TT. Never win a grand tour with that problem .

It looked like Pinot died a thousand deaths on that TT, not really a surprise there though, with some of the pure climbers they seem reluctant to improve their TT skills, even though Yates has shown that working on it and improving enough to hold in there is really valuable.

Maybe he should have taken some tips from Aru?... then again, perhaps not.

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NorthEastJimmy | 5 years ago
2 likes

Is 4th a podium spot?  Also if 4th is also 3rd then I guess that's correct too.

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