AOSTA, Italy, May 23 (Reuters) - Denmark's Jonas Vingegaard took the Giro d'Italia leader's pink jersey for the first time after completing a hat-trick of stage wins, as the race favourite soloed to the summit to take stage 14 on Saturday, proving too strong for his rivals in the Alps.
The Visma-Lease a Bike rider, already successful on the summit finishes on stages seven and nine, attacked with less than 5 km left of the gruelling 133-km ride from Aosta to Pila, and now looks set to win the Giro at his first attempt.
Austrian Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) was second, 49 seconds behind, with Australian former winner Jai Hindley taking third.
Portugal's Afonso Eulalio (Bahrain Victorious), who had hung onto the pink jersey since taking the overall lead after stage five, trailed in almost three minutes behind Vingegaard, and drops to second place, 2 minutes 26 seconds off the new leader.
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
