Narvaez doubles up as Team UAE rejig Giro d'Italia aims
Ecuadorian Jhonatan Narvaez powered away from his breakaway rivals to win stage eight of the Giro d'Italia on Saturday for his second victory and injury-decimated Team UAE's third so far.
Adam Yates, Jay Vine and Marc Soler have all been forced out of the Giro after a gruesome stage three pile up in Bulgaria, but the super-team from the Emirates has refocussed impressively.
A rolling 156km stage starting from Chieti on the Adriatic seemed to favour a breakaway win.
Narvaez, who had already won stage four in a sprint, was part of a breakaway midway through the day after an original escape had been reeled in. At the end he opened a 32 second gap at the line on Norway's Andreas Leknessund of Uno-X Mobility, with another UAE man Mikkel Bjerg third.
"He was the man of the day," Narvaez said of Bjerg. "It was a full headwind over 60km and it was so hard for me. We had agreed he would lead me though and I would take the climb."
Pink jersey Afonso Eulalio, who grabbed a sizeable lead on stage five, still heads the Giro ahead of Jonas Vingegaard and Felix Gall.
Race favourite Vingegaard ignited his own Giro title bid on Friday on the formidable Blockhaus climb, finishing 13 seconds clear of Gall, while former Giro winner Red Bull's Jai Hindley was a further 49 seconds back in third to remain in the chase.
On Saturday, Hindley attacked on a climb to the line but crossed the summit with Vingegaard on his wheel a slender 2sec ahead of the peloton.
Sunday's stage nine also starts on the Adriatic and finishes with a steep climb over the final three kilometres where Eulalio will again be tested by the big guns.
Monday is a day off and Tuesday sees what promises to be a decisive 42km individual time trial along Italy's west coast
Some 15 riders have pulled out so far by comparison with 25 who never made it as far as Rome in 2025.
(Z.Nkosi--TPT)
