Giro d’Italia Stage 12: Segaert Stuns with Solo Raid, Eulálio Snatches Seconds from Vingegaard

Alec Segaert took the stage away from the sprinters with a blazing solo raid on stage 12 of the Giro d’Italia.

The young Belgian on Bahrain-Victorious rolled the dice around 3km from the line with a 55kph attack and held off the bunch to take the finish photo all alone.

Toon Aerts (Lotto-Intermarché) and Guillermo Silva (XDS Astana) won the sprint for the podium places out of a disappointed bunch of fast-finishers.

This was the first stage win of what’s already an extra-successful Giro d’Italia for Bahrain-Victorious, who’ve been leading the race with Afonso Eulálio for the past week.

Eulálio scored a second win for the Bahraini team Wednesday.

The Portuguese surprise kicked out of the bunch to win the Red Bull sprint 15km from the line and pad his lead over Jonas Vingegaard by a further 6 seconds.

Vingegaard and Visma-Lease a Bike watched on unflustered when Eulálio made his move.

Eulálio now leads GC by 33 seconds over Vingegaard and clearly won’t give up his pink jersey without a fight.

How long can he hold on?

A bruising multi-mountain stage on Saturday will show whether Visma can convert on its extreme confidence when it didn’t counter Eulálio’s bonus sprint.

Team Movistar may be the most downbeat after they didn’t reel in Segaert’s solo attack.

The Spanish squad blew up the stage over the hilly finale to drop the pure sprinters. The tactic was working a tee – until 23-year-old Segaert decided to throw a spanner into their plans, that is.

Pure sprinters made to suffer

Movistar rolled out the same strategy Wednesday it used with near success for Orluis Aular on stage 4: “Set a crazy pace on the climbs in the middle of the stage, drop the sprinters, and don’t let them chase back in the long flat finale.”

The Spanish squad set a savage pace across back-to-back cat.3 climbs which hulked over the center of an otherwise flat stage.

The tactic worked.

Heavy sprinters like Paul Magnier, Jonathan Milan, Tobias Andresen, and Dylan Groenewegen were all toast by the time the bunch reached the top of the second summit at around 50km from the line.

From there, the stage boiled down to a game of chase. Two separate groups loaded with sprinters and their domestiques dangled 90 seconds and three minutes back on the reduced peloton.

With all the pure sprinters suffering, EF and NSN chipped in at the front with Movistar through the downhill and flat run to the line.

The sprinters realized their day was done around 15km from home. The big dogs rolled in easy to save their legs for a fully flat stage on Sunday.

The stage looked set for a sprint of the versatile sprinters until Segaert made what’s becoming a trademark move.

The powerhouse pursuiter who launched a similar late attack at Gent-Wevelgem made his move 3.3km from the line and dangled just 100m in front of the bunch through the downtown final.

A series of wide roundabouts in the final kilometer perhaps played into Segaert’s favor by disrupting the chase, but it was a brave move that was duly rewarded with a marquee win.

Giro d’Italia stage 12 results