Being in the lead of a Grand Tour is a dream scenario for any rider. Once again punching above his weight on a major summit finish on Sunday in the Giro d’Italia, Afonso Eúlalio (Bahrain Victorious) remained admirably realistic about how quickly his grip on the maglia rosa was dwindling.
When asked about whether his family had yet reached Italy to witness the high point of his career to date for themselves, Eulálio answered simply, “when my family arrive, I won’t have the jersey with me”.
His time loss of 41 seconds to Jonas Vingegaard meant that his original GC advantage of over six minutes after Wednesday’s breakaway stage had now shrunk to just 2:24. Eulálio nonetheless continued to impress enormously with what he was achieving.
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On Sunday, for example, on the Corno delle Scale, his fifth place was well ahead of almost all the GC favourites barring Vingegaard, Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Thymen Arensman (Netcompany Ineos). As he said afterwards, getting to the rest day in pink very much had the feel of ‘Mission Accomplished’.
“It’s perfect, my Giro is done,” he said, “I’ve made it to the rest day in the maglia rosa. I don’t know what my limits are, but to finish in the top five is crazy for me.
“The last 50 kilometres of this stage was a long effort, so I tried to stay out of the wind and not fight for positions, keep as much as possible for later.
“Then the final three kilometres of the climb, they were steep, really steep, super-hard, so I saved what energy I could, then in the last part I went all in.”
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While he promised that he would do his utmost to defend the lead in Tuesday’s time trial against the vastly, more experienced GC contenders like Vingegaard, Eulálio recognised that just being in the pink jersey had brought him up a level.
He was, he said, “a better rider” because of that.
“All my teammates believe in me, the staff, the team directors, that’s given me more power,” he said. “Normally I’m just a worker man, but this maglia is amazing.”
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