Giro d'Italia 2025 - Race Recap
What did we learn, friends?
The 2025 Giro d’Italia is over and we’re shortly going to be gearing up for the 2025 Tour de France. Before we do, however, let’s review what we learned from the Giro this year. Andiamo!
You Can Banish Your Demons
Let me set the scene for you: It’s 2018 and Simon Yates (Visma-LAB) is on the slopes of the Col delle Finestre, riding for a weird forerunner team of Jayco AlUla. It’s Stage 19, and Simon has been wearing the pink jersey for nearly two weeks. He’s shown weakness on the Prato Nevoso in Italy’s Piedmont region, but he still has the lead in GC and, if he can just make it to Sestriere and everything goes according to plan, he’ll be golden.
You may recall that everything did not go according to plan. Simon cracked badly on the Finestre climb, losing 38 minutes and the pink jersey to British cycling robot Chris Froome. The 2018 Giro and the Finestre climb in particular have haunted Simon Yates for years1, until last Saturday when Simon finally banished those demons on those very same slopes.
Not to take anything away from Simon, who put in a truly monster performance, but this was all made possible by…
The Power of Pettiness
As someone who negotiates for a living, I am no stranger to a standoff that is benefiting no one and hurting everyone. But Isaac Del Toro (UAE) and Richard Carapaz (EF Education) took it to the next level in Stage 20 of this year’s Giro. There are a lot of opinions out there about what exactly went down - did Del Toro just not have the legs? was he badly-advised by the DS is the UAE car? - but in the end, it was nothing more than two men having a petty squabble on the side of a mountain. Once Del Toro and Carapaz decided that they would rather lose the maglia rossa to Simon Yates than let each other creep on the wheel and attack for 2nd place, it was all over.
Credit to Del Toro for being young enough not to know any better. This was his first Grand Tour and he should be proud of 90% of his performance. And extra credit and a chapeau to Carapaz, who certainly is old enough to know better but who has the true heart of a hater willing to burn his whole race down just to keep the other guy from winning.
And from hate to…
The Motivating Power of Friendship
Stage 16 gave us a real warm-and-fuzzy treat, with Christian Scaroni (XDS Astana) and Lorenzo Fortunato (XDS Astana) finishing the stage hand-in-hand. Fortunato, who already had the maglia azzura in hand, did Scaroni a solid and let him get a stage win for himself. We love to see it!
And even though Wout Van Aert (Visma-LAB) seems like the kind of guy who has good boundaries with his coworkers, his efforts for teammate Simon Yates on the Col delle Finestre are a testament to the true power of friendship. Great job, Wout! It’s nice to see you smiling again!
And back to pettiness..
Meg Was Right About Roglič All Along (and also Ayuso to an extent)
If I got anything right about this Giro, it was that Primož Roglič might be made of glass and unable to weather the last week of the race.2 Is it his age? Is 35 the year a pro cyclist becomes constitutionally unable to withstand several low-speed crashes on a variety of race surfaces? Roglič can’t be straight-up washed because he won the Vuelta last year, so what’s going on with him? I’m curious what the rest of his season looks like, because this is ridiculous.
Speaking of ridiculous, I was also right about Juan Ayuso (UAE) if you squint, which is exactly what Ayuso was doing after Stage 18 when he was stung in the eye by a bee and left the race. I gotta give him credit: blaming your underwhelming performance on an insect is at least a new one for Ayuso. Better luck next time, bud!
The Ultimate Foreign Trip is to Vatican City
In a Giro that visited Albania and Slovenia several times, the ultimate foreign trip this year was to a country totally within Italy: Vatican City.
Typically, the Rome stage of the Giro skirts around Vatican City, but doesn’t enter it. This year, in honor of the Jubilee Year, Stage 21 was routed right through the Vatican Gardens so that Pope Francis (R.I.P.) could bless the peloton. Well, you know how that turned out, but it was nice of the new Pope Leo3 to agree to greet the peloton.
I honestly thought the peloton was going to buzz by St. Peter’s Basilica and keep it moving, but no! With the peloton still in neutralized position, the whole lot of them got off of their bikes and the jersey leaders stood up next to Pope Leo while he blessed them in Italian and English. Imagine having your balls out in those skimpy outfits in front of the Bishop of Rome! What a wonder sport is, truly.
That’s it for the 2025 Giro! What a wild, unexpected ride it has been! I’m ready to move onto my own Italian adventure and will be leaving for my trip to Liguria and Piedmont in less than a week! But don’t worry, I’ll be back in late June to prep you for our next Grand Tour - the ever-thrilling Tour de France. Ciao!
Maybe even more than his “accidental” 2016 doping violation!
He started Stage 16 “for his teammates,” but we all knew that he was held together by scotch tape at that point, and he abandoned before the end of the stage.
[Insert screaming eagle gif here for the first American pope]