6 hours ago
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Denmark’s Kasper Asgreen took advantage of a crash in the chasing peloton and went alone to win stage 14 of the Giro d’Italia, while the Mexican Isaac del Toro extended his overall lead.
Asgreen was part of an early breakaway trio but, after several riders were brought down in a crash which split up the peloton, the Dane went for broke in the final kilometres and held off the chasing group.
“It was a tough day out there,” Asgreen of EF Education-EasyPost said. “It’s annoying when you have to destroy yourself completely like this to win bike races but when it works out it’s all worth it.”
The Australian Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) outsprinted the Dutchman Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike) to take second place on the 195-km stage from Treviso to Nova Gorica, just over Italy’s border with Slovenia.
Del Toro (UAE Team Emirates) managed to avoid trouble and was with the chasing group which followed Asgreen over the line to increase his lead at the head of the general classification with Britain’s Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) climbing to second after finishing with the same time as the Mexican.
Del Toro began the day with a 38sec lead over his teammate Juan Ayuso, but now has a gap of 1min 20sec on Yates, with Ayuso a further 6sec back.
Asgreen went away with the Italians Martin Marcellusi and Mirco Maestri with the peloton expected to reel them in before the finish, but a stretch of wet, narrow cobbled streets threw those plans out of the window with less than 25km to race.
Mads Pedersen, a one-time race leader and winner of four stages, was among those taken down along with his Lidl-Trek colleague Giulio Ciccone, who had a nasty fall, but a reduced chasing bunch powered on, leaving many of Del Toro’s rivals in their wake.
With the chasers closing in, Asgreen took off and coming into the final kilometre held a 16sec lead, enough to see the Dane home and able to celebrate long before the line, coming in 16sec ahead of the 16-man group.
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That group contained Del Toro and Yates but many of the Mexican’s main rivals were left counting the cost of that earlier incident, which could have a huge bearing on the overall Giro result.
The pre-race favourite, Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), began the stage 1min 35sec behind Del Toro, but racing in his native Slovenia brought little joy as the 2023 winner remains fifth overall but is now 2min 23sec adrift.
