Giro d’Italia: Italy’s Alberto Bettiol wins stage 18

Italy’s Alberto Bettiol took victory from the breakaway on stage 18 of the Giro d’Italia as overall leader Egan Bernal finished safely in the peloton.

Bettiol timed his effort to perfection on the longest stage of this year’s race – at 231km – to finish 17 seconds clear of Simone Consonni in Stradella.

After a quiet day in the general classification battle, Ineos Grenadiers’ Bernal remains two minutes 21 seconds ahead of Damiano Caruso.

Britain’s Simon Yates is third overall.

Team BikeExchange leader Yates is 3:23 behind Bernal, while compatriot Hugh Carthy is fifth.

Deceuninck-Quick-Step’s French rider Remi Cavagna launched a strong attack but was caught by Bettiol inside the final 10km.

Winner Bettiol, of EF Education-Nippo, finished over 20 minutes ahead of a relaxed peloton, which included the pink jersey and general classification contenders.

Bernal, who cracked for the first time during Wednesday’s stage 17, said: “I hope I’ve recovered well, I felt much better on the bike than yesterday and I hope tomorrow will be another good day.

“It’s difficult to say I’m super-confident – I’m just trying to do my best. You can’t say you are overconfident because we saw yesterday and in the past years that with one bad day you can lose everything.”

There are three stages remaining at this year’s race.

The riders face a summit finish to Alpe di Mera at an average gradient of 9.1% on stage 19 on Friday.

They will then twice climb above 2,000m during stage 20 to Alpe Motta, before Sunday’s 29.5km individual time-trial in Milan.