Revolution at Giro d'Italia: Van Aert wins, Del Toro in pink

It took the Strade Bianche, with the winning finish of the Flemish Wout Van Aert in Siena's Piazza Del Campo, to revolutionise the Giro d'Italia.

In the dust we finally saw the light. And the light tells us that finally, after so much muddling through, the big boys of the race put up a fight. We had complained, accusing them of playing hide and seek, of dragging their feet, and instead, in the long-awaited stage of the terrible gravel roads of Siena, came a powerful bang that upset the classification, leaving winners and losers on the field, including our Diego Ulissi, who after Saturday's exploit, as expected, had to give up the pink jersey. Nothing serious, he had already done his feat.

So let's try to line up the novelties of a stage full of twists and turns, attacks, dust, crashes and punctures. Apart from the splendid stage success of Van Aert, who returned to victory after a thousand criticisms and punishments ("the eternal second" like Raymond Poulidor and Tano Belloni), the first real novelty, almost a blitz, is the conquest of the pink jersey by the Mexican Isaac del Toro, the authentic star of a day that saw him always in the front row, even questioning the leadership, in the Uae Emirates, of Juan Ayuso, the Spanish baby talent captain, at least on the eve of the race, of the team.

Well, Del Toro, unleashing the attack when Roglic fell in the second dirt track, practically raced for himself by launching into a ruthless forcing that, inevitably, also damaged Ayuso, who remained in the middle (with Ciccone, Tiberi, Carapaz and then Bernal) between the Mexican's frenzied attack and the more distanced group of Roglic, who was in heavy difficulty due to the consequences of the fall.

Usually, when another team's most feared rival goes into crisis, the common goal is to give it the final blow by joining forces. Del Toro, of this unwritten but always practised pact, calmly ignored it, aiming for the only thing he wanted. To win the stage and the pink jersey in one fell swoop. Goal achieved for the pink jersey. Not so for the stage success obtained, after a splendid head-to-head with the Mexican, by Van Aert, second protagonist of a race that suddenly gave all those emotions that had been missing in the first part of the Giro.