Giro d’Italia: Magnus Cort beats weather to win stage 10 as Thomas stays in pink

Magnus Cort Nielsen won a wet and cold 10th stage of the Giro d’Italia on Tuesday after a successful breakaway, while Geraint Thomas kept hold of the pink jersey.

Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) maintained his two-second lead over Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) after they both finished safely in the peloton in terrible conditions, 51 seconds behind Cort. Tao Geoghegan Hart was third overall, five seconds behind his Ineos teammate.

Cort (EF Education-EasyPost) held off two other breakaway riders, Derek Gee (Israel-PremierTech) and Alessandro De Marchi (Jayco-Alula) at the end of the rolling 196km route through the Tuscan Apennines from Scandiano to Viareggio on the Mediterranean coast.

The victory completed a Grand Tour set of stage wins for Danish rider Cort, who has previously won six stages at the Vuelta a España and two in the Tour de France. Italy’s De Marchi came up just short again after a failed push for a first-ever Giro stage win last week in Naples.

Thomas moved into the lead on Sunday’s rest day after the pre-race favourite, Remco Evenepoel, had to withdraw after testing positive for Covid-19. Other riders have also had to abandon because of the virus, including Domenico Pozzovivo (Israel-PremierTech) and Rigoberto Urán (EF Education-EasyPost).

In addition to Covid disruption, this year’s Giro has been beset by bad weather and it caused problems again on Tuesday with low temperatures and rain throughout. It was even discussed whether to amend the route over the top of the day’s main climb, the second-category Passo delle Radici.

Team buses followed the riders on their way to the category two climb in case they were needed to transport them if conditions worsened. In a separate incident, Alberto Bettiol (EF