All eyes were on Jonas Vingegaard as the Giro d’Italia peloton approached Blockhaus. The climb, which in its past two ascents in the men’s race have been positioned at the end of Stage 9, arrived slightly earlier in this year’s edition on Stage 7 as the first general classification test of the race.
Blockhaus is nestled within the Apennines of Abruzzo and packs so much punch that it regularly makes or breaks hopes of the Giro’s GC contenders. Cycling history has been written on its slopes since 1967 when Eddy Merckx announced himself in Grand Tours, and once again in 2026 it ripped apart the peloton, with Jonas Vingegaard bursting into life with a solo victory for grab his first Giro d’Italia stage win.
With one big mountain test down of the 2026 edition, here are five big takeaways from the action.
Jonas Vingegaard does the expected
Main favourite Jonas Vingegaard passed the first GC test of the race, attacking away from his rivals and soloing to victory on Blockhaus in the final 5km. In doing so, he completed his Grand Tour stage win set and bumped himself up from 15th to second overall, where he sits just over three minutes behind maglia rosa Afonso Eulálio of Bahrain-Victorious.
It wasn’t as dominant a victory as might’ve been expected though, with Decathlon-CMA CGM’s Felix Gall coming in only 13 seconds behind Vingegaard.
Felix Gall enters the conversation
Gall was comfortably the best of the rest behind Vingegaard on Blockhaus. The Austrian, who finished fifth overall at the Tour de France last season, dropped Giulio Pellizzari at the 4km to go mark and steadily paced his way up the mountain, only losing 13 seconds to Vingegaard to put him third overall, 17 seconds behind the Dane.
It’s good for Gall that the stage finished on a summit instead of another descent given his recent struggles downhill at the Tour of the Alps. We’ll see if his uphill form can sustain him when multi-mountain stages come.
Giulio Pellizzari ‘over his limit’
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe brought two leaders to this year’s Giro in Giulio Pellizzari – who has had back-to-back strong Giros, first breaking through at the race in 2024 then finishing sixth in 2025 – and Jai Hindley, winner on Blockhaus on his way to the overall victory in 2022.
Pellizzari entered the race off the back of winning the Tour of the Alps and things looked promising as he followed the initial launch from Vingegaard, however he began to gradually slip back. Hindley shepherded him to the line before sprinting for bonus seconds himself, the Australian finishing third with Pellizzari in fourth. Both lost just over a minute to Vingegaard at the first big hurdle.
Decathlon CMA CGM DS Luke Roberts noted seeing Pellizzari going ‘over his limit’ in trying to follow Vingegaard as his rider Gall paced himself before dropping the Italian in the final 4km. 22-year-old Pellizzari is still in new territory as a GC favourite, and he’ll only benefit in having a former winner like Hindley for company.
Afonso Eulálio is still in pink
It would have been a big ask for Vingegaard to cut the six-minute deficit to Bahrain Victorious’s Afonso Eulálio at the beginning of the stage, and the Portuguese rider is still in the pink jersey after finishing 15th on Blockhaus. Eulálio’s advantage has now been reduced to 3min 17sec ahead of a backloaded hilly Stage 8, where he should still keep the jersey.
But heading into the rest day, the peloton is set to face another summit finish with the Category 1 Corno alla Scale (10.8km, 5.9%) hosting the finale to Sunday’s stage. This might just be where the maglia rosa switches shoulders.
Biggest losers on Blockhaus
Spare a thought for Ineos Grenadiers’ Ben Turner, who missed out on a very realistic chance of victory on Stage 4 when he was put on domestique duties to help Egan Bernal limit his losses. Just a few days later Bernal lost almost three minutes to Vingegaard on Blockhaus, surely putting an end to his GC challenge barring some Chris Froome-style heroics as he now sits 15th overall.
Another big loser on the day was Movistar’s Enric Mas. The Giro debutant is no stranger to Grand Tour podiums being a reliable GC challenger on home roads at the Vuelta a España, but he also couldn’t navigate the race’s first hurdle. Mas ended up in a group with Bernal only to be distanced further, losing almost six minutes to Vingegaard.
Blockhaus giveth and Blockhaus taketh away.
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