BELLINZONA, Italy, May 26 (Reuters) - Jonas Vingegaard underlined his dominance on uphill finishes at the Giro d'Italia, launching a solo attack on the climb to Cari to claim victory on stage 16 on Tuesday.
It marked the Dane's fourth stage win of the race and further tightened his hold on the leader’s jersey, with overall honours now looking increasingly assured on his Giro debut.
On Monday's rest day, Vingegaard declared his desire to win a stage while wearing the pink jersey, and quickly followed up that promise in Switzerland on the 113-km ride from Bellinzona. His lead at the top is now over four minutes.
"We wanted to try to win in the pink jersey and obviously it can also go wrong," Vingegaard said after the stage win.
"So we chose the first option to do it because if we failed then we would have another one as well."
Vingegaard made his attack less than 7 km from the top, and as in his three previous stage wins, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider was followed home by Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM), but this time the Austrian lost over one minute.
Gall did move into second overall but with five stages left and two more mountain rides to come, the likelihood is Vingegaard will only increase his lead further before the race concludes in Rome on Sunday.
Australian Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), the 2022 Giro winner, came in third. Long-time race leader, Portugal's Afonso Eulalio (Bahrain Victorious), trailed in over three minutes behind Vingegaard and dropped from second to fifth overall.
SHORT BUT FAR FROM SWEET
It may have been the shortest road stage of this year's race but with two ascents of the Torre and Leontica double-header, and the 11.6-km category-one climb to the summit finish, it proved a gruelling ride in the Swiss Alps.
The early breakaway group was whittled down to four riders, but they knew their chances were doomed with the peloton closing in and triple-stage winner Jhonatan Narvaez was first to give up the ghost, followed by Giulio Ciccone and Einer Rubio.
That left Australian Chris Harper alone out front at the start of the climb to Cari. But with Vingegaard's Visma teammates pushing at the front of the main bunch, he was quickly closed down.
"It's a long climb. It took around half an hour, I guess, and again, my teammates today, they did an amazing job," Vingegaard said.
"They pulled from the start and didn't give the breakaway any chances and on the last climb they reduced the bunch and then I had to do the rest."
Davide Piganzoli was the last Visma man left alongside Vingegaard before the Dane made his expected attack and, typically, Gall was the only rider who attempted to follow.
Even the Austrian had no answer this time but had enough energy at the end to beat Hindley in a sprint to the line.
Wednesday's stage 17 is a 202-km ride from Cassano d'Adda to Andalo.
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes; Editing by Pritha Sarkar and Ken Ferris)
