Egan Bernal and his team put on a show of strength on the final kick to the finish of stage nine at the Giro d'Italia 2021 and now the Colombian has uploaded his 'Tappa e Maglia' ride to Strava.
Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) put on a real show of dominance that we haven't really seen from him, even when he won the Tour de France in 2019. In his final attack he put in a maximum kick of over 704 watts, or 12.3 watts per kilogram. He averaged 439w over the 1.47km segment of the stage finish, averaging 22.7kmh but hitting over 34kmh in the latter part of the steep climb as he chased the stage win.
His ride on Strava says that his ride was 156.8km long, slightly longer than the 158km stated on the official stage profile.
The stage started in Castel di Sangro and wound its way through the countryside of the Abruzzo region of Italy over multiple mountains before finishing on the ski slope service road, Rocca di Cambio just outside of Campo Felice.
Bernal's attack put everyone in trouble with just Giulio Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo) able to follow the infernal pace set by the 24-year-old before the Italian lost touch as they caught the breakaway with around 400 metres to go.
The Colombian held 583w for 30 seconds and over 500w for a minute and a half in a very impressive ride in the final few kilometres. His biggest one-hour effort of 300w came at the start of the stage though, as the break tried to get away on the early climbs.
Recently, Bernal has been uncertain about how he will perform at the Giro due to issues he's been having with his back. The injury that saw him abandon the Tour de France in 2020. But, there seems to be no signs of it causing any problems as of yet.
The Ineos Grenadiers leader took the stage by seven seconds over Ciccone and a fast finishing Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana-Premier Tech) with second place overall, Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck - Quick-Step) finishing in fourth at 10 seconds.
Bernal now leads the overall standings by 15 seconds over Evenepoel with Vlasov in third at 21 seconds.
British riders Hugh Carthy (EF-Nippo) and Simon Yates (BikeExchange) both sit in the top 10 in sixth at 44 seconds and ninth at 55 seconds.
Ineos Grenadiers also have another option if needed for the overall with Dani Martínez sitting in 11th place overall at 1-12 behind his team-mate.
The final stage of the first week is more in the favour of the sprinters or a possible breakaway over the very short 139km from L'Aquila to Foligno.
The route takes in six climbs, three of which may cause issues but only one is categorised as a category four climb handing out the minimum amount of points before it descends and flattens out for the final 15km.
Tim Bonville-Ginn is one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter.
Bonville-Ginn started working in cycling journalism while still at school and university for a voluntary site based on Twitter before also doing slots for Eurosport's online web team and has been on location at the Tour de Yorkshire, Tour of Britain, UCI World Championships and various track events. He then joined the Cycling Weekly team in late February of 2020.
When not writing stories for the site, Bonville-Ginn doesn't really switch off his cycling side as he watches every race that is televised as well as being a rider himself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager.
He rides a Specialized Tarmac SL4 when out on his local roads back in West Yorkshire as well as in northern Hampshire with the hills and mountains being his preferred terrain.
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