Race leader Tadej Pogacar dominates stage 20 at Giro d'Italia

Tadej Pogacar of UAE Team Emirates showed his absolute domination of this year's Giro d'Italia again on Saturday, riding away solo to win stage 20, his sixth stage victory as he extended his overall lead going into the final day.

Pogacar could afford to wave to the crowd in the final stages of the 184km route from Alpago to Bassano del Grappa as he powered home to put a roughly 10-minute gap between himself and his closest rivals in the general classification.

The Slovenian already had an overall lead of seven minutes and 42 seconds over Daniel Felipe Martinez, and when he made his move on the day's second climb of Monte Grappa, nobody could keep pace.

Valentin Paret-Peintre (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale), winner of stage 10, came in second as he outsprinted Martinez who finished third, more than two minutes behind Pogacar.

The leader now has an unassailable lead of nine minutes and 56 seconds.

At the beginning of the first ascent to Monte Grappa, a leading group of 11 riders began to split, and Pelayo Sanchez, Jimmy Janssens and Alessandro Tonelli took to the front.

UAE Emirates had controlled the peloton, happy to allow the group to stay away before the climbs, but never allowing the gap to exceed four minutes as Pogacar steadied himself for another stage win.

"Rui (Oliveira) and (Sebastian) Molano did a great job until the first climb then Vegard (Stake Laengen) and Mikkel (Bjerg) set a really good pace on the first part of the climb, which I was really happy with," Pogacar said.

At the top of the first climb, the leading trio were overtaken by Giulio Pellizzari (VF Group–Bardiani–CSF–Faizane) after he escaped from the peloton and on the second climb the young Italian left the others behind.

On stage 16, Pellizzari was denied