West Australian Jai Hindley now leads the 2020 Giro d’Italia after his Sunweb teammate Wilco Kelderman lost time on the final climb of the penultimate stage.
24yo Hindley finished Stage 20 in second place to Team Ineos’s Tao Geoghegan Hart who was strongly supported by teammate Rohan Dennis, third on the stage. Hindley was awarded the famous pink jersey by the narrowest of margins and is less than a second ahead of Geoghegan prior to the final 15km time trial.
While the young Aussie donned the famous Maglia Rosa, Kelderman managed to minimise his losses and holds onto the podium spot in third place for the team.
“I didn’t think it was possible, but here I am; it’s an incredible feeling,” said Hindley at the finish.
“We had a plan with the team upfront today. If Wilco lost a certain amount of time I had the opportunity to go for it and try put time into Tao, which I tried to do. He was super strong and unfortunately I couldn’t put any time into him and it’s just the way it is. I really put it out there today but I just didn’t have it in the end but to go into the jersey, it’s massive.”
“It was like we expected,” explained Kelderman. “We had the plan up front to react, and Jai was good enough to follow but I wasn’t. It was the same as the Stelvio stage with the best two climbers in front. I’m a bit disappointed that I couldn’t finish it off, but in the end I can be proud of everybody and hopefully Jai can finish it off tomorrow and then we have a really nice team result. I’ll go full gas tomorrow, the TT is always full gas and we’ll see what happens.”