Giro d'Italia - Race Preview
The who, what, and where of 2025's Giro
Bienvenuti, and welcome to the 2025 Giro d’Italia! The racing starts this Friday so we need to get ourselves organized. Our goal today is to give you some info about the 108th Giro and who’s going to be racing in it before turning to the first three stages in Albania. Along the way, let’s see how many Albanian History Facts I can fit into this newsletter about a bike race. Andiamo!
A Grand Tour for the Little Guys
The 108th Giro d’Italia has a lot to live up to. The 107th edition in 2024 was a corker. Do you remember the Tadej Pogačar of it all? The record-breaking and the Triple Crown winning of it all? Yeah, this year’s Giro is in a tough spot after that.
Their solution? Lots of climbing! The last third of the stages are mountain stages, with more climbing than any Giro in recent years. Plus there are two relatively short ITTs and lots of hilly stages - which, don’t be fooled, still contain thousands of feet of climbing. After the first three stages in Albania, this year’s route will travel from south to north before looping back to finish in Rome (but not before taking three tiny detours into Slovenia in Stage 14 for some reason). We’ve got the Monte Grappa in Stage 15, we’ve got the Colle delle Finestre in Stage 20, we’ve got-
Look. I don’t know how to break it to you. We’re doing gravel again this year. You know how I feel about the boys riding on those skinny wheels on gravel so we don’t need to discuss it. But just be aware that it is happening in Stage 9. At least we’ll get nice views of Siena at the end of it.
I have another confession to make. I’ve waited until you were sufficiently invested in this thing to let you know that neither Tadej Pogačar nor Jonas Vingegaard is racing in the Giro this year. Surprise! But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have an exceptional roster of riders ready to battle it out for the maglia rossa:
Primož Roglič (Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe): Okay, so we all know that I’m not a Roglič fan, per se. But he did win the Giro as recently as 2023 and he’s the favorite this year. He’ll be in the capable hands of Jai Hindley, Daniel Felipe Martínez, and Jan Tratnik but don’t forget that he is prone to a freak accident. Let’s just hope he doesn’t end up in a hay bale on this one.
Wout Van Aert (Visma-LAB): Even without Jonas, Visma-LAB is in good shape with a strong roster of Simon Yates, Dylan van Baarle, Wilco Kelderman, Steven Kruijswijk, and child cycling prodigy Olav Kooij.1 But I’m here for Wout Van Aert, who has never ridden the Giro before and has had an unremarkable Spring. Can he take this opportunity?
Tom Pidcock (Q36.5): Well, well, well. Look what Pro Team snuck in with Israel-Premier Tech. You know ol’ Tom here is just dying to get to the gravel stage!
A Hologram of Tadej Pogačar (UAE): In the real Pogačar’s absence, UAE is sending two reliable co-leaders in Juan Ayuso and Adam Yates. Let’s see if Ayuso’s performance is as underwhelming as he expects it to be!
And All the Rest! We’re looking forward to some punchy sprint stages with Mads Petersen (Lidl–Trek) and Kaden Groves (Alpecin–Deceuninck), some audacious breakaways with Filippo Zana (Jayco–AlUla) and Wout Poels (XDS Astana), and some grueling climbs with Giulio Pellizzari (Redbull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Michael Storer (Tudor Pro). We’re going to have fun! I may lose my mind after dealing with the world’s jankiest race website for a month, but you’ll be fine. We’ll get through it, together.
We’re Starting Where?
Stages 1-3 will be in Albania - which, fyi for the geographically-deficient of you, is located just across the Adriatic Sea from the heel of Italy’s boot. We start in Stage 1 on the coast in Durrës, an ancient Greek settlement that also contains sites from Albania’s 2nd century Roman, 5th century Venetian, and 6th century Byzantine historical periods. From Durrës, the riders will head inland for 120 hilly kilometers before tackling the Surrel ascent outside Albania’s capital Tirana twice. That’s right - it’s day one and we’ve got these poor guys doing two loops of a 20km circuit with a Category 3 climb with an average gradient of 5.4% and a steep descent. Good luck, boys!
Stage 2 is a 13.7km individual time trial in Tirana, starting at iconic Skanderbeg Square. The big news about Stage 2 is that a madman must have designed it. Just look at all of those hairpin turns!
Italians refer to the start/finish location for Stage 3 as Valona, but Albanians call it Vlorë. It is a port city in the southwest of Albania, situated opposite the heel of Italy. This stage will see the riders circle Mount Maja Qores to the south of the city, travel 40km along (hopefully scenic) coastal roads, and then tackle the 7% gradient of the Qafa e Llogarasë climb before a fast finish.
Albanian History Update
What do you know about Albania, other than the fact that a small country improbably produced talents such as Dua Lipa, Ava Max, and Rita Ora? Did you know that Albania was a Marxist-Leninist totalitarian state until 1992? Did you know that its former Prime Minister Enver Hoxha spent most of the 20th Century trying to out-Stalin Stalin? Did you know that Albania looked at Mao’s Cultural Revolution and concluded that Mao had some good ideas???
The history of Albania is absolutely wild, but today I want to focus on how Italian history intersects with Albanian history to give us some context for this crossover episode. If you listen to Mussolini (which…you shouldn’t), he’d say that Albanians were basically just Romans, which means they were basically just Italians. Mussolini did the whole Trump “wouldn’t it be funny if we annexed Greenland/just kidding we’re not going to do that/but what if I’m not kidding” routine about Albania throughout the most of the 1930s, and all it took was Hitler not giving him a heads up about Czechoslovakia to make him invade once and for all. Albania’s King Zog (his actual name) tried his best but Albania just wasn’t set up to resist the third-most powerful fascist state in Europe, I guess.2
All this makes having an Italian bike race start in Albania a little awkward, yes? Apparently, no! Even with all of that historical baggage, Italy and Albania maintain warm diplomatic ties, and many Albanians live in Italy and vice-versa. The cultural, linguistic, economic, and even gastronomic ties between Italy and Albania transcend war and occupation.3 See? Global cooperation is possible.
That’s it for today! I’m looking forward to the first weekend of Grand Tour racing and I hope you are too! I’ll see you on the first rest day!
I’m serious. Kooij was born after 9/11.
Not to talk shit about the Albanians, but the Albanian navy at the time was four machine-gun loaded patrol boats.
I’d say it’s a credit to how nice the Albanian people are in general, but then I found out about how they feel about Yugoslavs.