A Giro d'Italia with many winners

The Professor took off his glasses, put them on the table, and scratched the edges of his lips with the thumb and middle finger of his right hand. Then he made a very French ppffff. It took him a while to answer. The interviewer let him do it, he didn't rush him. After all, Gianni Brera liked that man, he appreciated what he said, and above all he appreciated his silences. Silences can sometimes be more evocative than words, they revive interest in a conversation, they can make us appreciate it more, they give the idea that it is not obvious.

Laurent Fignon broke the silence with another ppffff. “You know what? That the Giro and the Tour are two similar races, two incredible hardships, the difference is that if you are the strongest you can win the Tour de France with your legs. The Giro d’Italia, no. Or rather, you always win it with your legs, but it’s better to say two prayers, because you never know. This is what fascinates me and at the same time makes me hate it: in the Giro, your legs aren’t enough, you also need a stubborn head, a spirit of adaptation and a saint who loves you”.

At the Giro d'Italia many times – it has happened a lot of times, it will happen again – you start out as winners, you prove it along the way, but then you return home with many kilometres still to go to the finish line.

This year it happened to Primoz Roglic and Juan Ayuso, favourites in Durazzo, both of whom climbed into the team car and returned home early.

The pink jersey was supposed to be their business, a two-way fight. Maybe they had the wrong saint to turn to. Or maybe he was the right one, only he didn't like them.

What was supposed to be was not. The Giro d'Italia was something else and that something else was exciting, above all unexpected and comforting. And comforting precisely because it was unexpected. The Giro d'Italia needed a race like this year's. Because, with the exception of Tadej Pogacar's stint in 2024, for a few editions there had been few sprints and a lot of fear of missing out. And the Giro had started to look like a bad variety show, compared to the great performance that the Tour de France put on every summer. A show made of sprints and head-to-head battles uphill, team ambushes and actions that were a little crazy and a little desperate. And all of this made the wait-and-see attitude of filed wheels and postponed sprints of those who raced to wear the pink jersey obsolete. The Giro seemed like a second-run movie in a theater with uncomfortable seats. So much so that it made us think, doubt, that after all there was a cycling raced by Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard and one raced by everyone else. And Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard didn't come to the Giro.

Then the miracle.

While we were in despair at knowing that a Giro d'Italia without Tadej Pogacar was starting from Durazzo, with Jonas Vingegaard working for the Tour de France, Mathieu van der Poel training on the mountain bike, and Wout van Aert racing but with a weak leg, suddenly the riders in the race demonstrated, pedal stroke after pedal stroke, that there are not two cycling. There is only one . And it works the same whether those guys are there or not. And that we were idiots who believed the opposite. That we had understood nothing, pompous as we were with the belief that we had understood everything.

The Giro d'Italia, which will take to the road in Rome on Sunday, making an appointment for 2026, will not be won by Primoz Roglic or Juan Ayuso. Someone else will win it, because after all, from the time of Laurent Fignon - or rather, well before - to today it has changed completely, so as not to change at all.

It's still a question of balancing on a bicycle, of competition and conviction, of the will to sacrifice and explore. Above all, of legs and willpower. That of not giving up.

It is a long story of twenty-one days, capable, one pedal stroke after another of writing and rewriting itself. At the end of which there is a winner in the pink jersey and many other small winners.

And the ending this year is not written yet. As much as Isaac Del Toro, Richard Carapaz, Simon Yates, Egan Bernal, Giulio Pellizzari, Derek Gee, in one way or another and for different reasons, winners already are.

Isaac Del Toro because at twenty-one he was supposed to be an apprentice and instead he dressed in pink and in pink he gave a glimpse of an intriguing future. Richard Carapaz because after many falls, after several mistakes and some misunderstandings, he found the desire to invent a privateer Giro, attacking with the conviction of someone who had come to Italy to break the race , regardless of everything. Simon Yates because he forgot that he was the shadow of the rider he once was and reinvented himself for two weeks as a leading actor. Egan Bernal because at this Giro he remembered the effect of pedaling at the head of the group, sprinting, trying to outrun the others, making that accident that could have killed him a thing of the past . Giulio Pellizzari because he started out as Primoz Roglic's gregarious rider and found himself a mountain protagonist after the captain's abandonment, showing the team and himself that one day a place on the podium is within his reach. Derek Gee because he showed that there are still those pedal-powered dogs that are incapable of giving up. And we really needed them. Not to mention Mads Pedersen, capable of winning in the sprint, on climbs , pulling for his teammates, breaking away and not sparing himself a single meter.

The Giro d'Italia 2025 will experience another day of high mountains today, the last. It will climb the Cima Coppi, the highest point of the pink race. It will see other sprints, other crises, other moments that we would have liked to see but were afraid not to see.

Ultimately it's a really great Giro, it's a great celebration, it's music, as Paolo Belli's song said.

More on these topics: