After Thursday's 156-km race, the trio made a dash for Treviso, but it was a battle for fifth place instead of the win as a four-man breakaway group fought for the finish line by about 14 seconds.
Such an outcome seemed very unlikely before the stage and even on a day when the pack was struggling to gain two minutes on the peloton, but confidence in the breakaway only grew as they headed into the final 40km, 30km, and 20km.
At 50km to go, down the steep gradient of the fourth section Muro di Ca del Poggio, Dries De Bonde (Alpecin Phoenix), Magnus Korto (EF Education - Easy Post), Eduardo Affini (Jumbo-Visma), Davide Gabbro (Bardiani-CSF-Fezanne) had a 2:50 advantage. [It did not seem enough to survive to the finish ahead of the sprint teams of Groupama-FDJ, QuickStep-AlphaVinyl, and Team DSM, but with 40 km to go, there were still 2 minutes to go. At 10 km to go, it was 1:45, at 20 km to go, 1:15, and even at 10 km before the finish line, 1:05.
In the end, Cote held off Affini, Devont, and Gabbro to the finish in an unusually strong effort for a flat stage where a breakaway was hardly expected. Time triallist Affini was the first to jump out with 250 meters to go, and De Bondt passed him with a few meters to go, giving the Alpecin Phoenix its third Giro win.
"I knew Edoardo had one option," de Bond told Eurosport (opens in new tab) after the stage. 'He's not a pure sprinter, but he's incredibly strong.'
"He can do very long sprints and I think that's his only chance to beat Magnus. Everyone thought Magnus was the fastest, so he had to lead. But I knew that if Eduardo didn't go first I wouldn't have a chance, so he did a perfect lead out for me. So Eduardo did the perfect lead-out for me."
Affini later said he had not won a sprint since stage 4 of the Tour of Norway three years ago.
The Italian from Mantova, two hours west of the stage 18 finish, said his time trial strength did not translate into sprint wins, especially against fast finishers like Devonte and Cote.
"Unfortunately, Dries was faster than me. Like I said before, I'm not that fast. Like I said before, I don't have the speed. I'm not explosive, especially in the sprints, so I needed the long sprints.
"It was perfect with Cort in front of me and a little slipstream. I decided to go with my gut and go. I think he was half a lap faster."
The dash was the culmination of a hard day shared by four riders who had jumped into the break 10 km early in the stage three hours earlier. [Groupama FDJ and Quick-Step Alfa Vinyl quickly blocked the peloton shortly thereafter. [Then Rui Costa (UAE Team Emirates) shaved nearly a minute off at the 40km mark. The Portuguese rider's effort was questioned by De Mare lead-out man Jacopo Guarnieri and others, but the gap eventually widened again (with some fluctuations) as the race entered the last 70 km.
Up front, a four-man breakaway group fought fiercely several times throughout the stage. It was difficult to tell exactly what was going on, especially given the high pace and the somewhat erratic peloton behind, but Affini later explained.
"I would say the first part was really high powered to break and widen the gap. After that we decided to gamble a little bit to see what the group would do."
"Before Muro di Ca del Poggio, I decided to speed up and try to make up some time. In fact, that plan worked. And we always worked well together toward the same goal: to win the stage."
De Bond said that talking to and trusting each other was the key to consistent work and effort, which allowed them to get away with it all the way to the finish.
"From the moment we started talking and trusting each other, there wasn't a single turn that we skipped.
"For example, after a tight descent on a steep climb (again, Muro di Ca del Poggio - editor's note), Magnus lost about 20 meters of his wheel, but we knew that going full on at the bottom of the descent would kill him.
"So I waited for him to come back.
"It had to be the fastest guy who won today, and I had great respect for my escape buddy.
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