2020 Giro d'Italia Stage 8 Results & Recap
Stage 8 of the 2020 Giro d'Italia is in the books. The final results and standings are below, followed by our recap of how the race unfolded.
Race Recap
Dowsett takes emotional win in Vieste
It's been seven years since Alex Dowsett (Israel Start-Up Nation) took his first Giro d'Italia win with a time trial performance boosted him into the upper echelons of tester hierarchy. Today, the British rider felt the same winning euphoria on stage 8 of the Corsa Rosa, when he held off his breakaway companions to take a solo win in Vieste. The victory made more special as Dowsett's future in professional cycling was, up until now, uncertain with no team contract for 2021.
Salvatore Puccio (Ineos) and Matt Holmes (Lotto Soudal) came across the line for second and third place.
JoĂŁo Almeida (DQT) remains in the pink jersey on a fast and flat stage. However, tomorrow's parcours to the uphill finish in Roccaraso will be one of the first real GC tests and the second summit finish for the young Portuguese rider.
“Today was a quiet day, during which we could rest our legs for tomorrow, as nobody wanted to chase the attackers," Almeida said. "The last seven days have been pretty hard and stressful, so the teams wanted to have an easier stage ahead of Sunday, which will be quite a hard day with a lot of climbing. It’s going to be an important stage for the general classification and I’m sure riders will go on the offensive in order to gain time, while I will try to defend my maglia rosa. Together with the team we’ve worked very hard in this past week and I’ll give my best to keep the jersey."
With the peloton obviously content to sit back before tomorrow's hefty stage, Simone Ravanelli (Androni), Joey Rosskopf (CCC), Mathias Brandle (Israel Start-Up Nation), Alex Dowsett (Israel Start-Up Nation) Matthew Holmes (Lotto Soudal) and Salvatore Puccio (Ineos Grenadiers) took advantage and jumped away with 22km ridden.
They were allowed an advantage of up to 12 minutes at times, and very quickly it became clear the winner would come from the six rider break at the front. With 30km to go, Dowsett attacked first, his team at an advantage with Brandle also in the mix to wear down the other breakaway riders. They swapped attacks until Dowsett made the break with 18km left. From there, he went into time trial mode and the remainder of the break had to be content with racing for second. \n
Get our full coverage of the Giro d'Italia and every race we cover with our mobile app! The apps have over 100 additional exclusive features, including our award-winning Time Machine feature that lets you pause/rewind/replay the entire app to sync with delayed race video, integrated Fantasy Cycling, push notifications, an integrated news feed, live GPS tracking, world-class commentary, and our animated interactive maps and profiles.
