Narváez powers to second Giro d’Italia stage win as UAE Team fights back

Jhonatan Narváez sprinted away from his breakaway rivals to win stage eight of the Giro d’Italia on Saturday, securing his second victory of the race and the team’s third despite an injury-depleted UAE Team Emirates XRG roster.

Adam Yates, Jay Vine and Marc Soler were all forced to withdraw from the Giro following a gruesome pileup on stage three in Bulgaria, but the Emirates super-team has refocused impressively in their absence.

A rolling 156-kilometer stage starting from Chieti on the Adriatic coast appeared to favor a breakaway win. Narváez, the Ecuadorian rider who had already won stage four in a sprint, joined a breakaway midway through the day after an earlier escape was caught. He opened a 32-second gap at the finish line over Norway’s Andreas Leknessund of Uno-X Mobility, with another UAE rider, Mikkel Bjerg, finishing third.

Afonso Eulálio, who built a sizable lead on stage five, continues to lead the general classification ahead of Jonas Vingegaard and Felix Gall.

Narváez praised his teammate Bjerg, thanking the Dane for driving the breakaway to set up a decisive attack on the penultimate climb, where the Ecuadorian distanced Leknessund. Bjerg crossed the line in 16th place.

“It was a nice stage for me. I think we played well, with my teammate. He was the man of the day, Mikkel Bjerg and always working for the team,” Narváez said. “In the end it was about the legs. The first part, the full headwind, on the flat, was really hard. But we never gave up. With 60k to go we rode well, we rode smart and we had the opportunity to go for the stage.”

Race favorite Vingegaard ignited his own Giro title bid on Friday on the formidable Blockhaus climb, finishing 13 seconds clear of Gall, while former Giro winner Jai Hindley was a further 49 seconds back in third. On Saturday, Hindley attacked on a climb to the line but crossed the summit with Vingegaard on his wheel, a slender two seconds ahead of the peloton.

Sunday’s stage nine also starts on the Adriatic and finishes with a steep climb over the final three kilometers, where Eulálio will again face a test from the top contenders. Monday is a rest day, followed by what promises to be a decisive 42-kilometer individual time trial along Italy’s west coast on Tuesday. Some 15 riders have withdrawn so far, compared with 25 who did not make it as far as Rome in 2025.