Gilabert’s improvement in the impressive surroundings of Place Moulin

Great performance of Barcelona’s Arnau Gilabert in the second stage of the Giro del Valle d’Aosta, second consecutive day with a high finish and another stage susceptible to be a queen stage in any other race due to the entity of the climbs. In Bionaz, in the impressive surroundings of the Place Moulin mountain reservoir, where Luca Bagnara dropped six minutes on a worst day for him, the breakaway of the day was once again successful, with Norwegian Martin Tjøtta (Bourg-en-Bresse) as its architect with a few seconds of margin over other fellow adventurers.

Around half a minute after Tjotta, the arrival of the illustrious riders looking towards the overall general classification began. And in an outstanding (finally) fourteenth position, Gilabert finished 1’13” behind the winner. Leader Joshua Golliker (FDF) suffered, but managed to hold on to the yellow jersey before Saturday’s terrifying stage. The queen among queens: 172 kilometres with five mountain passes and, not surprisingly in this edition, the last of them hosting the finish.

“I’m happy with the day”, says Arnau on his way back to the hotel. “I didn’t start as I would have liked, especially because I think I had made a very good preparation for this race. But today I see things differently, there is still a race left, and a very hard one, and we are going to give everything to go out as well as possible. With optimism. And from less to more”. Gilabert is 22nd, 5’58” behind. Bagnara is 24th, 6’56” behind.

[? @GiroVdA ]