Jonas Vingegaard is the leading pick and today it feels like misfortune may be a greater threat to his chances of winning overall than any rival rider.
Plenty can come unstuck in the next three weeks and if it’s easy to imagine the winner, it’s harder to cite the names alongside him on podium in Rome so here’s a look at Vingegaard’s mission and the other contenders.
Only Tadej Pogačar, team mates and misfortune have stopped Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) winning stage races in recent years. In the Slovenian’s absence he should be clear of the field and he’s been lucky before starting the race as João Almeida who pushed him close at the Vuelta last year, and Richard Carapaz who can gamble with attacks while other defend, have opted not to race.
As we saw in Paris-Nice his style is not to snipe time bonuses but to attack mid-climb and open up a gap so he can turn a handful of opportunities into minutes of advantage. Technically solid for positioning and descending, he comes with a strong team in service undistracted by sprint stages. He’s planning to ride the Tour de France too so will he try to win with economy to be fresher for July? Only his team still don’t have a title sponsor for next year and needs to be seen to win big to entice any sponsors so one hypothesis is they’ll aim for every opportunity that Vingegaard or Sep Kuss can conclude; even lending out the maglia rosa mid-race could be a concession and if this idea stands they could steamroller the breakaways on mountain days.
The Giro is a must-win, he’s here to avoid basing his season around a confrontation with Pogačar and anything less than the maglia rosa in Rome could be awkward for him and the sponsor quest. He hasn’t raced since mid-March so it’s a big assumption is he’s ready to go, but he won the Vuelta last year well short of his best.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe bring previous winner Jai Hindley as co-leader and he’ll soon be back to the Blockhaus where he built his victory in 2022. His win is fascinating today because to ponder “how did that happen?” is to open the door to tantalising surprises for 2026 too, not just for Hindley but for a host of rival contenders who we struggle to see winning today but in three week’s time it might all be perfectly obvious.
Giulio Pellizzari was sixth last year and is fast-improving and blooming into an all-round GC rider who can hold his own in time trials when a year ago he was losing time. He’d love to win but can equally ignore the Dane to settle for second place as this would be a huge result and would delight Italian audiences both for the result and the hope it invites, La Gazzetta dello Sport already brands him la nostra grande speraza, “our great hope”. They also have a Aleksandr Vlasov as a third prong, he’s struggled with injuries last year but this season he looks ready to bounce back. This gives them options but it’ll be hard to isolate Vingegaard.
With João Almeida out of form, UAE bring Adam Yates as their leader when he’s normally been a support rider, a role he excels in. He’s just won the Gran Camiño race but the hard part is to see him getting ahead of Vingegaard. The team come with options in Jay Vine and Jan Christen but can these two sustain GC challenges? Vine is saying no to this already but he can match the best climbers and and rival the best time triallists too, but his best result in a grand tour is 30th overall, in part because he’s taken on support roles but it’s not a stretch to imagine him going up the road on a mountain stage and being hard to pull back while Yates sits tight. Aged 21, Christen rides his first grand tour and is a lively prospect with a reputation as a man in a hurry; he’s been injured this spring but has been posting some impressive rides to Strava of late.
Felix Gall (Decathlon-CMA CGM) is big talent with some of the best lab numbers going but his challenge is exploiting this out on the road and not losing out because of mistakes with positioning or descending. Fifth in the 2025 Tour de France showed us what he can do but there’s a fragile aspect for a grand tour challenge, plus he’ll dread the 40km time trial stage.
Ben O’Connor was fourth here in 2024 and like old team mate Gall a brittle rider but also searching to recover the form of his last year at Decathlon-Ag2r. One of his strengths is stamina and endurance, he’s thrived on marathon stages and long climbs but this is a Giro with short stages but if things turn cold and wet he can thrive when others shiver. He’ll still cope and he can often beat expectations for time trials too.
Ineos bring past winner Egan Bernal but post-accident still on a long path back to victory, even his Vuelta stage win last year was when the finish was changed mid-stage because of protest, not his fault but he’s not beating the best yet, still he’s looking better, the challenge is to convert this into a podium finish or a stage win along the way. Thymen Arensman has twice been sixth overall in the Giro but a third time would be a disappointment unless he can take a stage or two along the way, he’ll appreciate the long time trial and the relatively softer third week.
Bahrain bring veteran Damiano Caruso for a valedictory Giro, a resilient rider who seems to hide in plain sight until the third week when he’s suddenly a GC contender but aged 38 he’s slower and more a road captain for Santiago Buitrago who is aiming for a top-5. Afonso Eulalio is a promising climber to watch too.
Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek) was fourth last year when La Gazzetta Dello Sport was branding him il sottomarino, “the submarine”, as he was hard to spot but always among the fleet of contenders. This year he’s been harder to spot among the results in recent weeks but he’ll like the long time trial. Giulio Ciccone (pictured) has given up on going for the overall as when he tried he’s never cracked the top-10 overall, but what if this just eases the pressure and he ends up well-placed? He could also go for the mountains competition as he packs a good sprint on climbs.
Enric Mas (Movistar) starts his 15th grand tour but first Giro. He’s often seemed to use the Tour as prep for the Vuelta so feels like an unknown quantity for May, a blank canvas. Is he better in the second grand tour or is that home advantage? Will he like this Giro’s Vuelta-like short distances route? Probably yes to this question and he’s backed by a solid team including Javier Romo.
Tudor tandem Michael Storer and Mathys Rondel are interesting for their different styles. Storer seems temperamental and volatile for form because at his best he can push Vingegaard in the mountains but twice tenth in the Giro shows delivering across three weeks is hard, while Rondel starts his first grand tour and is a shy rider trying to find his way.
Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto-Intermarché) seems to have lost his way of late. Said to be on the market, the Giro is a good shop window for his talents but if he can be back at his best he’s a punchy rider more likely to thrill for stage wins than ride to a steady top-10.
Finally a mention for Alessandro Pinarello (NSN) who was Pellizzari’s colleague at Bardiani and improving too, he’s in form and in a field of just 41 Italian starters – the lowest ever – another one for the tifosi to cheer.
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Vingegaard |
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Pellizzari, Yates, Gee-West, Arensman |
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Bernal, Christen |
I’m quite interested to see the comments here – as it’s near unthinkable that Jonas won’t win if he avoids mishaps, which makes it very difficult not to compare with the feeling before Pogacar’s Giro? I’m wondering if people are more/less excited than they were then?
I generally love the Giro so am always excited but it’s the unavoidable elephant in the room when there’s a favourite this overwhelming.
Personally I find Pogacar always makes something happen so the pre race interest in ‘what will he do next’ grabs me more, but I understand if there are others who feel it becomes the Pogacar show and gravitate to Jonas’ quieter dominance that we’re likely to see in the coming weeks.
Or maybe most just find these super talents suffocating when they’re missing a rival? Hopefully we get a surprise.
I think a lot hangs on whether Visma-LAB are happy to have Vingegaard in the lead with a stage win after the Blockhaus stage, or if their appetite is much bigger. If they ride down the breakaways so they win more and more then it could be like watching repeats.
Any opportunity for Vingegaard to take the maglia rosa before Blockhaus? Stages 2, 4, 5 look potentially tricky but not hard enough for a GC contender?
As you say, think it could be to get him in the maglia rosa unless he goes wild on Stage 2 but we’ll get some clues to the form of riders.
If Vinny goes big on Blockhaus and in the ITT, maybe he’ll have enough of a time cushion to allow team-mates to go for a stage win (and then if he’s on a bad day they could be satellite helpers)?
My comment is that this is the Giro, and so there’s always a tension in the air. The cognitive dissonance of holding two certainties in mind at once. We know that Vingegaard will win, we also know the Giro can sow chaos from the first week to the last. Even if Jonas doesn’t animate a race in the same way Pog does, its highly likely the race itself will provide the unexpected animation. So we can watch with interest for the full three weeks.
In an earlier comment section and said I was (again) hoping for a good show for Bernal – my main hope for this race. But it would also be nice to see Adam Yates win. I don’t think he’s in his brother’s shadow exactly, but Simon has a more eye catching set of results. A truly big win for Adam would be fitting.
2024 was good precisely because of that Pogi effect you name so well… “what will he do next?”. And he did interesting things, indeed.
Plus, 2024 Pogi was the outstanding fav at the Giro, but may I remember that many still thought “he had given up on winning the TDF so he went to the Giro to have an excuse for losing in July”. I think that I made a point about sports champions not thinking that way and his plan (and his coach’s) treating the Giro as super training.
The now obvious final result wasn’t as obvious so there was great expectation about the combination of the two GTs. Come the eve of *st. 15* of the TDF many including Visma’s DSs were commenting publicly that Jonas was going to take the Tour as from then on it was advantage for him over Pogi (hence the all-in tactics on PDB).
Most of this context now feels lacking, but personally I actually have expectations of next TDF being more open than last one or than what rough data would suggest. I have got very few elements to feel like that, so it’s not I’m arguing it’s a “probable” turn of events, just a feeeling, maybe subconscient wishful thinking. Those sensation give me curiosity and good vibes re: the Giro to see what Jonas and Visma are going to do.
Plus, as I commented before, a broad range of very interesting names to follow without any specific objective to comply with, just see if they show up in the heat of action and how.
2024 was good?
I liked it although I preferred the TDF that year, however way better than the 2022-2023 Giri, not to speak of the 2023 Vuelta (or the 2025 one), and even better than 2021 TDF to me (but probably really on par with the latter). In context, it was probably also better than 2025 TDF…
So, to me, it actually belonged to a high percentile of satisfaction in recent years. Despite sitting much below TDF 2022, TDF 2024 and TDF 2023, for sure.
Are you kidding, the ‘23 Vuelta was the best ever 😉! I know that the ‘23 Giro was a wet slog, but I still have positive memories because it was never decided until the end. Lots of breakaway action cause G was racing old-school, which I generally like. But the highlights were pretty few and far between to be honest.
oldDAVE
I’ll probably approach this Giro the same way I did in ’24. I watched the first few stages back then, but once it became obvious it was going to be a boring Pog-show, I tuned out—and I’ll do the same this year. As long as the race isn’t settled with 99% certainty, I’ll keep following it.
However, I’m less convinced that Vingo will walk away with it. His highs and lows are more noticeable and match the rest of the field, and a rough day heading into Blockhouse could easily cost him the GC.
I doubt whether anyone will get a big lead until Blockhaus and perhaps not even then, so that’s a large part of the Giro undecided.
There do seem to be quite a number of potential breakaway stages, and they will add unpredictability (and hence interest) particularly as a number of the “sprint stages” look like they could stymie the sprinter teams. Oh, and Marc Soler is riding so who knows what he will do – probably something mad and then go on to win that stage…
Speaking of UAE without a strong leader keeping the rest in line, I do not see them working well together. Or at all. Is it wrong to watch anticipating UAE infighting?
Jan Christen and Marc Soler on the same team, with a leader to work for?
Could be a fun test for UAE managers for whom difficult decisions are normally of the order of which sandwich to eat first, or what temperature to set inside the team car.
I see UAE copying last year’s Vuelta, with lots of individual highlights but not a team win. But as with the 2025 Vuelta I don’t give them much chance for the gc win, so a podium and a bunch of stage wins would be a great consolation prize.
It is a pity that Del Toro didn’t return to the scene of last year’s crime.
@oldDAVE
Interesting question. I usually keep up with all the Grand Tours and enjoy watching both Pogacar and Vingegaard. I did skip most of the 2024 Giro, though – the gap between Pogacar and the rest was just too big to make it exciting. Still, that’s the only Grand Tour I’ve missed in the last 12 years, so I’ll probably watch the entire Giro this time 🙂
I like Pellizzari and really hope he can grow further. It would be amazing for cycling to have both an Italian and a Frenchman challenging the GTs.
oldDave – I’ll watch the way I think you probably do with Pog. I’ll be happy to see Jonas win if he does, and won’t be sad if he dominates. If the race for the top step gets boring, I’ll gladly switch my interest to the lesser stories. Plus, I don’t expect Visma to take over and smother the race the way UAE/Pog do, so I don’t expect as many dull and predictable finishes, and I do expect lots of breakaway shenanigans.
Even where the GC battle is done and dusted, I still enjoy the racing in individual stages. It just sucks a bit when the breakaway gets continually shut down by teams like UAE and Visma. I probably object more to this than dominant GC wins by Pog or Jonas.
Kuss takes a few minutes in an early breakaway and we’re left with a will they / won’t they just like the Vuelta a few years ago. Highly unlikely, I know, but it’s about as probable as anyone else beating Vingegaard in a straight GC fight.
I’m still looking forward to the Giro though, unexpected things can happen, and there’s plenty of stages which will be great on their own, I’m sure.
I was thinking that Italians would all be Formula 1 fans by now but Pellizzari may be able to give them a reason to watch.
And tennis player Sinner. Today’s Gazzetta has an interview with him but it’s very much trying to introduce him to the readership – he likes his pasta with tomato and basil, supports Milan, he’d take playing cards if he had to spend a long time on a desert island – with little talk about cycling.
In Italy more so than in other countries, TV time and press space which do generate public interest and hence further public interest are paid by sponsors in the first instance, i.e., you as a company do sponsor an athlete or a sport, so you “persuade” media to dedicate to them part of the general news stream. Persuade as in buying ads on that medium for your company (not necessarily related to the sportsperson), but also a broad range of practices from taking good care of social relations to just making gifts to some journos or just paying them under the counter.
Antonelli still doesn’t have a proportional share of the media attention which F1 received years ago, when it was being directly pushed by the likes of Fiat or Vodafone (both more Italian back then than they’re now)… despite his results being much more interesting than Ferrari’s in its lacklustre years.
Of course, an absolute generational talent or a single shocking outstanding result will work by itself. Yet even Sinner’s coming had been prepared on *generalist* media a couple of years before he became top 20 five years ago.
The real shame in this whole situation is that the Giro and most Italian cycling belong to RCS, one of the main *generalist* media companies of the country!
But as they were always historically more linked to cars & petrol (and football), and as a partial consequence (due to their lack of vision) considered cycling as a competitor, not a greenwashing opportunity (we’re speaking of a process of decades), they developed an internal “culture” of isolating and marginalising the cycling heritage they had inherited.
You could compare heaps of Gazzetta’s front pages through decades with L’Equipe’s to get what I mean.
Gazzetta’s cycling coverage is frustrating, largely because it’s under-resourced, they don’t have many writers (at times one or two at the Giro, their home race, part of RCS etc) and it’s written for non-cyclists.
Vinegaard’s big pre-race interview involved questions like whether he liked Italy and him expressing a liking for white wine, and what football team he supports with little given to his plans for the Giro.
It’s still better than most of the press but a mention for Corriere’s reports too. Online Tuttobici is good. Miss the Bidon podcast.
Agreed. I used to suggest Cicloweb.it but the webpage as such recently became more standard then it used to be and found a new «core business» (so to say, as it’s close to no-profit) in sharing with the Italian public of fans, yet not totally hardcore ones, a good deal of news from international sources or from the social network cycling communities. It works, I guess, but less interesting to me personally or to most inrng readers, I’d say. They still have great in-depth opinion pieces from time to time, I linked some here, little ago on sportswashing and human rights or on the environmental impact of cycling.
May I add bici.pro by Enzo Vicennati, not just a good journalists but also a good writer. Interviews often are detailed, well-structured and thought-provoking, although I haven’t been reading for a while.
Currently RCS really lacks quality writing. Bonarrigo at Corriere (which is also RCS obviously but a separate redaction from Gazzetta) can deliver a good piece on a good day but he tends to lose himself out in a fog of allusions and suspicions.
In Spain Carlos Arribas on El País (the main generalist newspaper with decent impact in Latin America, too) has great story-telling, epic writing style, some scoop, a long career inside the peloton, a balanced take on all athletes. I’m just afraid he’ll retire anyday soon leaving quite a gap to fill, as it happened in RCS with Pastonesi.
Its interesting to hear how cycling is reported and viewed from different countries.
As Flanders is no longer on the Spanish RTVE channel, during this years race, I found myself on youtube browsing the many different livestreams being retransmitted. The first I found featured an English commentary that was trully dull. I then found an Australian stream where every commentary began with an attention seeking/macho “Look at him…!” That didn’t last long either.
I think I then found the Belgium Sportza channel. Suddenly I was listening to a commentary full of the history of cycling. It was just perfect.
By comparison, when watching RTVE and when Pedro Delgado is commenting, all the riders are heroes, they are valient, and as you suggest in your comments about Arribas, every stage of a GC is always an epic journey into the unknown…
And who doesn’t miss Dino Buzzati? It’s a shame, but we are children of our time…
In the Basque Country, until not long ago, we also had a first-rate chronicler in J. Gómez Peña at El Correo, the legacy Basque newspaper of reference, organizer of La Vuelta before the arrival of Unipublic/ASO. His race reports were delightful. He could turn a Giro stage with a 65% nap coefficient into a two-page chronicle full of history and local gastronomy, competitive cycling, legend, personal anecdotes about the riders, and so on. A marvel. You’d buy the newspaper just to read him. Other Spanish journalists privately admitted he was ‘the best.’
But the newspaper’s managers told him that kind of journalism no longer sells, and that he had to produce 800 short online news pieces a day, on eight different topics, and forget about double-page print chronicles. He stood his ground and lost. Today he writes about international relations in another section. He does it at half throttle, like Froomey or Bernal after the crash. And he’s still the best pen in the newsroom.
But in the age of reels, if you want to read good cycling writing, all we have left is rereading The Rules over and over again, or coming here to read The Inner Ring.
How strange to see Lotto-Intermarché on the presentation podium yesterday with a meagre five riders apparently due to illness picked up on the Lotto-Famenne-Ardenne Classic earlier this week. Sympathetic thoughts too for young Joshua Giddings thrown in the GT deep end with a mere 24 hours notice. He must be a little fearful.
Strange to see the most unpredictable GT with such a strong favourite. It is difficult to see a scenario where assuming JV avoids any crashes or issues he doesn’t win. But it is the Giro and stuff will happen even if the weather stays warm and dry (which the forecast suggests will be the case for the next two weeks, no sign of any late snow!). The intrigue may end up being whether JV paces his effort with July in mind. A win is a win whether by 1 minute or 10 minutes.
The time gap as you say doesn’t matter too much but several stage wins for him along the way or will the team be content that he’s just ahead of his GC rivals and this way we get some breakaways in the mountain that go to the line?
Could he be taking the Froome approaach? He went into the Giro very undercooked with the aim of getting into form in the final week as he kept an eye on the Tour. Worked out spectacularly at the Giro but not quite so well at the Tour (for someone like Froome a place on the podium at that time wasn’t good enough).
Curious to see if any quality co-leaders will do anything substantial, especially Hindley (no chainring?) and Pellizzari, while it would be wonderful to see Bernal on the podium. My hope is that between Yates/Christen, Bernal/Arensman, Ciccone/Gee-West and Hindley/Pellizzari, an interesting challenge will emerge, even if it eventually turns into a fight for second place. Unfortunately, the reality of co-leaders seems to be mainly a level of insurance against off-days, unexpected poor form, and crashes (“leadership will be decided on the road” stuff) rather than any bold tactics.
With co-leaders two isn’t automatically better than one. If Hindley attacks early on the Blockhaus Vingegaard can just follow him and overtake when it suits, Pellizzari then doesn’t have many options. There can be a psychological gain but this is double-edged, the unspoken aspect is a co-leader wants the leadership.
Where it could work better is if someone like Vine can attack on a day with several climbs and get away earlier; but like Vine as apparently he’s not after the GC. But the idea is someone who can time trial or ride solo can try longer range moves that pressure a sole rider into reacting. Derek Gee-West is someone who could do this too, for a different example. But who is capable and who wants to take the risk of being countered?
As for Hindley’s chainring, the TT is probably too costly for him. He’s dependable and could be in the top-5 but how to get ahead? Like Pogačar in 2024 giving everyone else a chainring feels generous. It was tempting to have Vingegaard as the only name on the ratings.
Sadly, I seem to have lost interest a bit since it became so expensive to watch. I still like to follow, but where once I would have watched the stages end to end, I now just read the results and analysis. I wonder how many more there are like me.
If anyone wants to watch you can use a VPN to get English coverage on Australia’s SBS at https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/sport. I’ve not checked the small print about whether this is approved by SBS.
If anyone wants a VPN, I use Nord’s service and it works well.
Zero affiliation, just a listener who likes their on the ground grand tour coverage but The Cycling Podcast has sign-up offer if anyone’s interested some coin goes there way rather than all to Nord https://nordvpn.com/tcp/
I’ve succumbed as Sky do pay monthly now. So come the end of the Vuelta I will cancel my subscription until next March. Still a lot more costly than the Eurosport years but not the huge cost of an annual contract.
Feels like this is Jonas’ race to lose. If he is going to win then want to see how he does it.
There’s the manner, as in how much does he give and take. But also the absolute performance where if is winning, we can measure climbing times etc to see if he’s going to challenge for July.
Daily highlights are on in the UK for free on DMAX. I’d never heard of it either. Channel 39 on freeview, I think.
I’ve just checked and you’re right – 7pm tonight! Good to know for the days I can’t watch live.
cheers for sharing, never heard of that channel
It’s the freeview channel of Discovery / HBO (and Max obviously), or that’s so in several European countries at least. Not a bad idea to put highlights there for free. Audience will be extremely low but better than nothing and it helps the product.
Off we go, two Italian teams off the front with a no hope breakaway, all we need now is LarryT back 🙂
He seems to have defected to Cycling Weekly’s comments sections.