Jhonny Narváez flies on the walls of the Brands and wins his second stage in the Giro d’Italia

The wind is a child playing with the long line of sand, the border between the fields and the Adriatic, tangling in the hair of the fans in the stage that marks the sudden passage from south to north, from the high Abruzzo to the hills of the Marches, stirring and slapping the serene and determined face of Jhonatan Narváez, closed mouth, who does not stop, and finally surrenders. Protected by his Danish pilot, Mikkel Bjerg, who, back parallel to the ground, wide and secure like a bar counter, plays with the wind, and laughs, Narváez enters alone on the broken asphalt, on the medieval slopes of Capodarco and Reputolo, on the treacherous purple porphyry that paves the pontifical streets of Fermo, a pyramid on a hill. The wind no longer flies, only the Ecuadorian flies, a condor, towards victory.

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“It has been a very beautiful stage because it teaches you that you should never give up. There was an incredible headwind,” sighs Narváez at the finish line after watching several times on a screen the replay of his triumphant arrival. “For someone weighing 80 kilos, that can’t be anything, but for someone weighing 64, like me… I had a hard time on the flat.” It is the second victory of the Ecuadorian champion in this Giro, already winner in Cosenza on the fourth day, the fourth in the three Giros he has raced and the third, along with that of Igor Arrieta, of his UAE, a team reduced to five hyperactive guerrillas after the crashes that withdrew their leader, Adam Yates, Marc Soler, and Jay Vine.

Still leading, bright pink, Afonso Eulálio who, at the end of an accelerated stage, exposes Jonas Vingegaard, in blue mountain, as if asking, are you really the one they call the real leader? Vingegaard, after establishing his authority over the peloton symbolically at the Blockhaus on Friday, acts as a condescending boss, the anti-cannibal. He simply watches and brakes. He does not get excited when he smells a Pogacar-like wall, nor does he get impatient to show his back to everyone, he simply weaves his web patiently, but he is startled when Eulálio, daring, accelerates with his unique style of a certified mountain biker, light on development, bouncing over the steep porphyry of Fermo, where the popes strolled with canes and padded sandals, and suffers a spasm again when the one accelerating is the restless Australian Hindley.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote more than 60 years ago that ascending the Adriatic, the difference between south and north, between poor and rich Italy, was suddenly noticeable on the beaches, between those who live by the sea and those who live in the city and only go to the sea on vacation. “Above all, suddenly beautiful women appear, who, on the coast of Romagna, even become the only and undisputed protagonists, the owners, the queens, the amazons.” The Giro is now settled in the rich north, where there is only beauty, and arrives on Sunday at the mountain that gives air to the Bolognese, where they hang their mortadellas to dry, the Corno alle Scale (the door of the stairs), a final climb of 11 kilometers at 6%, in which the disastrous style of Felix Gall, like Pollentier or Escartín, the Austrian who does not let the Dane get far away, will challenge beauty again.

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General Classification

pos rider	Team	Time
1 Jhonatan Narváez Prado	UAD	3h:27:26
2 Andreas Leknessund	UXM	+00:32
3 Martin Tjøtta	UXM	+00:42
4 Guillermo Thomas Silva	XAT	+00:44
5 Lorenzo Milesi	MOV	+00:44
6 Cristian Scaroni	XAT	+00:48
7 Corbin Strong	NSN	+00:55
8 Juan Pedro López	MOV	+00:55
9 Wouter Poels	TDT	+00:58
10 Markel Beloki	EFE	+01:00

pos rider	Team	Time
1 Afonso Eulálio	TBV	34h:28:42
2 Jonas Vingegaard Rasmussen	TVL	+03:15
3 Felix Gall	DCD	+03:34
4 Cristian Scaroni	XAT	+04:18
5 Jai Hindley	RBH	+04:23
6 Giulio Pellizzari	RBH	+04:28
7 Ben O’Connor	JAY	+04:32
8 Mathys Rondel	TUD	+04:56
9 Thymen Arensman	IGD	+05:07
10 Michael Storer	TUD	+05:11

See full classification