The first Mountain of the Giro. Giro d'Italia stage 7 preview

After yesterday's hectic sprint finale, stage 7 is almost certainly to be the first stage with big time gaps between the GC favourites as the road goes uphill to a mountain top finish for the first time in this year's Giro.

The first action of the stage will likely come at the intermediate sprint, where the sprinters who want to win the Maglia Ciclamino, like Magnier and Milan, will sprint to try and claim the points needed in that competition and after that the road immediately goes uphill with a fairly large uncategorised climb beginning with just over 100km to go on what is the longest stage of the giro so some of the sprinters may struggle to make the time cut if the peloton really go for it on the early slopes though this feels unlikely. 

For a breakaway to succeed, they will need at least 5 minutes on the peloton coming into the bottom of the Blockhaus, so it feels really unlikely a break is allowed to stay away by Visma Lease-A-Bike and Red Bull Bora-Hansgrohe, with the length of the stage at 244km also favouring a GC battle for the stage win rather than a breakaway.

Blockhaus is a brute of a climb at 13.6km at 8.4% with gradients in some places reaching 14% it is a consistent leg-burning climb, which may well favour the less explosive guys like Felix Gall and Egan Bernal, who hit their watts all the way up rather than having to close down attacks and alternating between flatter sections and very steep section like some of the alpine mountains are more akin to.

The favourite for the stage is obviously Jonas Vingegaard. When he is in his best form, he would beat the rest of the field by a good minute or two, but he hasn't been tested yet in this Giro, so we don't really know just how good his legs are at this stage, and the same goes for the rest of the main GC favourites their legs havent been tested on a climb anywhere near as hard as the Blockhaus at this race so it is a voyage into the unknown but guys like Thymen Arensman and Felix Gall havent really been mentioned yet at this giro as they havent riden anywhere near the front yet they could be in great form and have just kept their powder dry so far. It would also be remiss of me to not mention Giulio Pellizzari as the main threat to Vingegaard, as he has been in brilliant form this season, and Red Bull's riding on stage 5 looked like they have great confidence in him to contend for the Maglia Rosa.

But all that being said, I'm going with Jonas Vingegaard as the winner for stage 7 of this year's Giro, but I don't think he will take pink this early, as at over 6 minutes behind Afonso Eulalio, who is a great climber in his own right, I can't see Eulalio losing that much time on this stage unless he is dropped before the final climb which feels very unlikely although we still wait to see how much his second place on stage 5 took out of his legs.