As the Australian disappeared up the climb, leader Longo Borghini twice tried to distance Kopecky, but found the Belgian impossible to shake from her back wheel.
Kopecky then proved the strongest in the final sprint to take six bonus seconds to the Italian’s four, reducing the gap to a single second and teeing up a mouthwatering final-day showdown in the mountains on Sunday.
Bradbury is at 1’12”, leapfrogging team-mate Niedermaier into the best young rider’s jersey, and can’t be discounted for the overall after a coming-of-age performance.
“I’m really cooked to be honest!” the Australian said at the finish. “It was full gas, I had to go deep, so far into the red zone. I don’t think I’ve ever pushed so hard in my life. At first, I was just thinking about the stage win and then at one point I was like, actually maybe we can be on the podium with me, if not, Antonia.
“I was thinking they would catch back up for sure! I came with speed so no one was expecting it, so I thought it wasn’t that they didn’t have the legs, it was that they didn’t expect it. I wasn’t really looking at my power in the end, I was just going full, full gas. I wasn’t really thinking about anything apart from each pedal stroke!”
The stage packed 3600m of vertical metres into just 120km, including two climbs of the Cat. 1 Passo Lanciano. The final climb of the day tacked on the extra Blockhaus ascent, a frequent fixture in the men’s Giro d’Italia and the scene of Eddy Merckx’s first-ever Giro victory.
Several short, punchy uncategorised climbs kicked off the day’s action before the 11km Passo Lanciano. The 20 points on offer at the summit were won by Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal), who moved into the Queen of the Mountains lead after Clara Emond (EF-Oatly-Cannondale) abandoned the race.
There were a few splits on the first pass up the Passo Lanciano but all the main favourites clung together and a second group, largely consisting of domestiques, rejoined them on the long, winding descent. It was the final climb of the day that provided all the drama.
Lidl-Trek, pacing for maglia rosa Longo Borghini, set a blistering pace on the lower slopes of the 16.5km climb, which hit highs of 14% and frequently hovered in the double digits. Brodie Chapman’s pace distanced the likes of Ghekiere, while Juliette Labous (dsm-firmenich PostNL) and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (FDJ-Suez) were the first big hitters to suffer.
Labous would get back on, but Uttrup Ludwig fell from third to ninth overall as the general classification radically changed shape.
Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek) took over and whittled the leading group down to a select few, but it was Bradbury’s attack at 9.5km to go that really ignited the race.
