“To be able to be in the top ten has become a nice goal. It’s close, but it won’t be easy”
44ª Giro d´Italia U23
Stage 9: Cavalese – Nevegal (167,1 km)
Davide Piganzoli took an important step to finish in the top ten of this Giro Giovani 2021 after a fabulous performance on Friday in the stage finishing in Nevegal. For the second time in this edition, the Lombard from Valtellina finished the last mountain stage in the top ten.
A ninth place really remarkable given his age, 18 years old, given his first year in the category and given the entity of all the rivals. Swiss rider Yanis Voissard scored the victory with an attack in the last kilometre, while Juan Ayuso, who was involved in a crash midway through the stage, defended his maglia rosa.
The day, with a long neutralised sixteen-kilometre stage, featured a lot of fighting from the opening flag, with a climb to the Passo Valles that again posed demanding terrain in the first kilometres of the day. At the first pass through Nevegal, a group of around fifty riders arrived, including both Davide Piganzoli and Fernanto Tercero. The second and final climb was an affair of about twenty riders, among whom Davide was always present and where the figure of the maglia rosa Juan Ayuso stood out.
“I didn’t expect to ride so strongly in this Giro d’Italia, my first experience at this level and in a stage race. I am very happy with how things are going these days and I am very grateful to the work of my team-mates. To be able to be in the top ten has become a nice goal. It’s close, but it won’t be easy. There’s still one stage to go and I’m only one second behind Alex Tolio. We have to fight until the last finish line”, says Davide Piganzoli with one day to go.
Rafa Díaz Justo, director of the U23 team of the Contador Foundation: “With the route of the neutralised stage we could say that Friday’s was possibly the longest stage of the Giro. A stage with several changes of weather, where it started with sunshine, it started to rain, it went from hot to cool, some cold moments, again hot and very humid. Davide is a spectacle. He is fighting for a place in the top ten against a field of riders that is going to be spectacular. What’s more, he’s there without missing a single day, in a ten-day tour, with no previous experience either in the race or in this number of days of competition… And all this at the age of eighteen”.
[📷 Isolapress / @giroditaliau23]
