Could British Ineos talent Tao Geoghegan Hart win this most unpredictable Giro d’Italia?

Geoghegan Hart has thrown himself into contention as a wild race enters its final week

Tao Geoghegan Hart celebrates victory on stage 15 (AP)

As we head into the second rest day at the end of the second week of the Giro d’Italia, now is a good time to take stock of what has been a most irregular Giro.

Looming over the entire race has been, of course, coronavirus. While Italy appeared to be doing far better than the rest of Europe when the Giro began, two weeks later and the Bel Paese is now recording over 10,000 new cases a day.

Unlike the Tour de France which continued more or less intact, the Giro has fallen prey to the virus. Britain’s Simon Yates, one of the favourites to win the race having looked on good form after his win in Tirreno-Adriatico before the Giro, tested positive and had to pull out. Following him was his whole team, Mitchelton-Scott, and also Jumbo-Visma, leaving the Giro two teams down.

While it’s still unclear how Yates and others caught coronavirus, the finger has been pointed at some potentially less than satisfactory bubble standards while in Sicily when the race begun.

Meanwhile Education First Pro Cycling – who are having a great Giro having already won two stages – wrote to the Giro’s organisers and UCI suggesting the race be ended on the second rest day. There was no other way to protect the bubble, the management felt.

All this after another race favourite, Britain’s Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers), had to abandon after falling heavily after running over a stray bottle in the neutralised zone on only Stage 2.

Right, now back to the racing. With two of the favourites missing, the general classification battle opened up and Portugal’s 22-year-old Joao Almeida (Deceuninck–Quick-Step) stepped in, taking the leaders Jersey on Stage 3.

He has looked strong – and holding on to the Jersey for 13 days in his first ever Grand Tour is impressive enough. But heading into the weekend all eyes turned to the GC battle and whether he could stay in pink into the third and most important week.

The previous week has seen some great racing, perhaps most notably Peter Sagan’s (Bora-Hansgroghe) soloing to victory on Stage 10, even when everyone tried to stop him the ever-popular sprinter prevailed to take his first Giro stage win – in his first ever Giro – to complete the hat-trick of stage wins in all three Grand Tours.

We have also seen Groupama-FDJ’s Arnaud Demare win his fourth stage, showing that he is unstoppable in a straight sprint in this Giro, and he still hold the points jersey into the third week.

The weekend, leading into the second rest day, saw a 34.1km time trial on Saturday and the battle for the stage came down to Ineos’s Rohan Dennis and Filippo Ganna. Nobody else could touch the pair and in the end Ganna took his third stage victory of this Giro and showed exactly why he is the world time trial champion.

Overall it was a good day for Almeida who put more time into his rivals and another good day for the so-far mostly invisible, Wilco Kelderman (Sunweb) who said after that he thinks “the whole Giro is going better” than he expected. Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo) lost more time to the leaders but was unlikely to be taking time on the time trial anyway – for “The Shark” the Sunday was all important.

Sunday was an all important stage of the Giro, 185KM over three intermediate climbs before a summit finish. This was the first proper mountain stage and Almeida looked to hold on to the Maglia Rosa into the rest day.

After an early and valiant effort by Rohan Dennis and a small group in the breakaway, including the ever-present Thomas de Gendt (Lotto-Soudal), the peloton hunted down the South Australian and from that point on, up the final climb to the summit finish at Piancavallo, it was all about the General Classification battle.

Brandon McNulty for UAE Emirates fell back, perhaps having gone too deep the day before in the time trial. Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) was also dropped and then The Shark himself was dropped leaving Almeida, Ineos’ Tao Geoghegan Hart, and Wilco Kelderman being led up the mountain by his Sunweb team-mate Jai Hindley.

Almeida looked as if he was digging deep, something Sunweb took advantage of and Hindley put in a great turn on the front upping the pace which only Kelderman and Geoghegan Hart could hold. Of the three, Britain’s Geoghegan Hart looked the most comfortable and the trio eased slowly away from the pink jersey.

Almeida, fought hard and managed, impressively, to keep the three within 40 seconds although how much that effort cost him is yet to show.

Geoghegan Hart took the stage victory, his first ever Grand Tour stage win, and Ineos’ fifth of this Giro showing that there is depth in the team even if their leaders falter. Without Thomas the team has been able to go on the hunt and it is reaping massive rewards for the Sir Dave Brailsford led team and makes a change from their usual tactical control of a race.

As we head into the third week of what has been an abnormal and exciting Giro d’Italia the GC is finally starting to take shape. Almeida still holds on to the maglia rosa but his 56 second lead to Kelderman has dropped to 15 seconds and unless he can recover his form in the rest day one has to say that the mountain-full final week looks like a tall ask for the young Portuguese rider.

Kelderman is looking commanding in second place and looks to be the strongest contender for the overall victory short of anything unexpected happening and don’t write that off in this Giro.

But what of the other contenders? Nibali is 3:29 minutes off the lead and it’s a big ask for him to claw that back, especially with another time trial coming up, although disregard Nibali at your peril, he hasn’t finished off the podium at the Giro since 2010. Meanwhile Rafa Majka (Bora-Hansgrohe) is sat in sixth at 3:18, and Domenico Pozzovivo (NTT) is eighth at 3:50 back. Fulgsang (Astana) is even further back in twelfth, 5:07 back.

So, the battle for the pink jersey looks likely to be a battle between Joao Almeida and Wilco Kelderman. However – whisper it – could Geoghegan Hart have a shot? After Sunday’s ride he is clearly very strong and riding well and looked even better than Kelderman at the summit of Piancavallo. He is in fourth place only 2:57 back from Almeida. Having won five stages, could Ineos Grenadiers change tactics and protect the young Londoner and put in an outside bid on the Pink Jersey?

The next week is going to be a tough one, with four out of six stages with heavy amounts of climbing, and the mountains, as always with the Giro, will ultimately decide the winner. The pure climbers will rise to the top while those with nothing else left to give will be revealed, there there will be no more hiding as we go into week three.

And still questions linger over the race. Will we make it to Milan or will coronavirus intervene? Will we get up the Passo di Stelvio or will the alpine snow put an end to those hopes?

In this year’s Giro d’Italia take nothing for granted.