Race thread: 🇮🇹 Tour of Italy 2026 (final week), May 26–31
This week offers stages for climbers and GC leaders, as well as stages for punchers. Sprinters will have the last day in Rome for them (providing they can catch a breakaway of Italian contis...)
Standings after 15 stages
General time classification
Le gap between the Dane and the Portuguese hasn't changed in a week in absolute value, just the sign has changed :-) Scaroni was 5^th^ but had to withdraw.
- Jonas Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma:
- Afonso Eulalio 🇵🇹 Bahrain: +2′24″
- Felix Gall 🇦🇹 Decathlon: +2′50″
- Thymen Arensman 🇳🇱 Ineos: +3′03″
- Jai Hindley Bora: +3′43″
- Giulio Pellizzari 🇮🇹 Bora: +4′22″
- Michael Storer 🇦🇺 Tudor: +4′46″
- Ben O'Connor 🇦🇺 Jayco: +5′22″
- Derek Gee 🇨🇦 Lidl-Trek: +5′41″
- Davide Piganzoli 🇮🇹 Visma: +6′13″
- Mathys Rondel 🇫🇷 Tudor: +6′58″
Points classification
The podium order is still the same, but Milan, who scored only 2 points in a week, may have given up.
- Paul Magnier 🇫🇷 Soudal-QS: 145 pts
- Jhonatan Narvaez 🇪🇨 UAE: 131
- Jonathan Milan 🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek: 78
- Davide Ballerini 🇮🇹 Astana: 70
- Manuele Tarozzi 🇮🇹 Bardiani: 48
Intermediary Sprints classification
Top-5 has the same members, but all riders from Italian teams kept on scoring while Milan didn't at all.
- Manuele Tarozzi 🇮🇹 Bardiani: 60
- Diego Sevilla 🇪🇸 Polti: 48
- Mattia Bais 🇮🇹 polti: 44
- Martin Marcellusi 🇮🇹 Bardiani: 25
- Jonathan Milan 🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek: 23
RB Sprints classification
The classification stalled, basically only Eulalio kept on scoring.
- Manuele Tarozzi 🇮🇹 Bardiani: 31
- Afonso Eulalio 🇵🇹 Bahrain: 30
- Diego Sevilla 🇪🇸 Polti: 22
Mountain classification
Sevilla could only score 3 points this week.
- Jonas Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma: 161
- Jardi Van der Lee 🇳🇱 EF: 77
- Giulio Ciccone 🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek: 75
- Felix Gall 🇦🇹 Decathlon: 72
- Diego Sevilla 🇪🇸 Polti: 63
Fuga classification
Only 30 km more for Sevilla this week. Often the breakaway groups were too large to count. But M. Bais managed to score more than 250 km.
- Diego Sevilla 🇪🇸 Polti: 753
- Mattia Bais 🇮🇹 polti: 516
- Manuele Tarozzi 🇮🇹 Bardiani: 458
- Martin Marcellusi 🇮🇹 Bardiani: 403
- Mirco Maestri 🇮🇹 Polti: 347
Teams classification
2 teams are clearly above the others.
- Visma 🇳🇱
- RB Bora 🇩🇪 +0′24″
- Tudor🇨🇭 +22′05″
- Ineos 🇬🇧 +22′07″
- Q36.5 🇨🇭 +30′58″
- Decathlon 🇫🇷 +49′06″
Stages
Stage 16, Tuesday 26
113 km, high difficulty (15 pts), no sprint zone, 1″ splits
This stage exhibits a funny design: its middle part is very much for punchers, but then there is a break, and finally a long finish-on-top for pure climbers.
::: spoiler Press to see detailed maps and profiles
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Stage 17, Wednesday 27
202 km, medium difficulty (25 pts), no sprint zone, 1″ splits
A stage for breakaways, punchers and guys doing secondary/tertiary classifications.
::: spoiler Press to see detailed maps and profiles
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Stage 18, Thursday 28
171 km, low difficulty (50 pts), 3 km sprint zone, 1″ splits
It could have been a stage for sprinters, if it wasn't for this last hump just 10 km from the line. Don't be fooled by its classification as 4^th^ category, it is not not a false flat but a wall, 1 km at 12%. A few years ago, we would have said this was tailored for Alaphilippe.
::: spoiler Press to see detailed maps and profiles
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Stage 19, Friday 29
151 km, high difficulty (15 pts), no sprint zone, 1″ splits
We find a bit of mountain here! 6 climbs including the cima Coppi of this year (Passo Giau) and almost 5000 m of elevation... For the GPM, Passo Giau will be worth 50 points, Passo Duran (the 1^st^ climb of the day) 40 pts, and the other 4, 18 points each; therefore 162 points are available.
Allowed delay will be around 55 mn, so there is very little hope to eliminate even a sick sprinter.
::: spoiler Press to see detailed maps and profiles
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Stage 20, Saturday 30
200 km, high difficulty (15 pts), no sprint zone, 1″ splits
The last mountain stage, with a main climb done twice.
::: spoiler Press to see detailed maps and profiles
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Stage 21, Sunday 31
131 km, no difficulty (50 pts), 5 km sprint zone, 3″ splits
A flat stage to finish on 8 laps of the circuit in the capital city.
::: spoiler Press to see detailed maps and profiles
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Great summary, looking forward for the last week!
Today should be good. Exciting stage profile for a Tuesday.
Stage 16, Tuesday 26
We indeed saw several races in one during this hot day all over Western Europe. There were several breakaways, until Narvaez (🇪🇨 UAE) got in one.
J. Milan (🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek) has indeed stopped fighting for the Cyclamen jersey. He pulled the peloton, chasing the breakaway to allow Ciccone🇮🇹 to join it; and once inside the right breakaway Ciccone🇮🇹 didn't at all defend Cyclamen points against Narvaez🇪🇨 who had come only for that.
Van der Lee tried hard to defend the Blue jersey he was wearing (in place of Vingegaard (🇩🇰 Visma)) but it was going too fast and he scored almost nothing, while Ciccone🇮🇹 was coming first in all 4 mid-stage climbs. However, with his stage win, Vingegaard🇩🇰 scores basically as many points as the Italian and remains well ahead.
Visma and Decathlon wanted again to fight for the stage, so the Italian Pinot got disappointed once more.
Nobody (including me) seemed to understand the reason why Bora accelerated at the bottom of the main, final climb. The main result of this short movement, was to blow up their own co-leader Pellizzari🇮🇹.
Kuss (🇺🇸 Visma) was as useless as usual, but Piganzoli🇮🇹 did his share, dropping many opponents before launching Vingegaard🇩🇰 and dropping a while, before coming back for his own GC position. I thought that Vingegaard🇩🇰 would ask him to go more slowly in order to attack only around 4 km from the line as he often does (or even wouldn't attack until inside the last km), but nope, I was wrong and the Dane attacked with more than 6 km to go. Gall (🇦🇹 Decathlon) attempted to follow for about 27 metres before giving up, and was soon caught up by a few survivors. Gee was dropped at least twice, but surprisingly managed to come back each time and finished with the 4-5 men group Gall🇦🇹 won in the end for time bonus. Bernal (🇨🇴 Ineos) was on a good day and (successfully) did a lot of work to bring back Arensman🇳🇱 towards the front, without completely collapsing after.
Eulalio (🇵🇹 Bahrain) was dropped early with O'Connor (🇦🇺 Jayco), but finished rather well again (with the old skeleton Poels (🇳🇱 now at Unibet) who never seem to give up), unlike the Australian. He leaves the GC podium but will still be wearing the White jersey with 2 minutes over Piganzoli (🇮🇹 Visma).
Pellizzari🇮🇹, completely out for GC, may be another thorn in Ciccone🇮🇹's foot for next stages victories.
not surprising... Gee has always been like this. Never follows the surges. Just rides his own race...
Roller coaster of emotions as a fan...
Stage 20, Saturday 30
Tarozzi (🇮🇹 Bardiani) and Warbasse (🇺🇸 Tudor) did a chase for more than 50 km, alone 1 mn behind a breakaway of 5. Tarozzi🇮🇹 needed the I.S. points for the Traganti Volanti classification that he leads just a few points ahead of the next guys. Unfortunately for him, not only he arrived cooked in the group after over an hour of 2 vs 5 effort, not only the I.S. was on top of a climb, but in the group there were both Leknessund (🇳🇴 Uno-X) and Silva (🇺🇾 Astana), who, as I said yesterday, rank 4^th^ and 3^rd^ in Cyclamen jersey classification! So poor Tarozzi🇮🇹 was beaten by both in the sprint, and his first place in Traganti Volanti classification is not 100% secured (even though he scored a few points, which is better than nothing and will make things easier to control tomorrow).
Naturally, none of the 3 French Eurosport commentators could understand why those 2 guys went for the sprint and didn't leave it to Tarozzi🇮🇹, for none of those 3 commentators can be arsed to give a quick look at classifications before the start of the stage, or even during the first 70 km of the stage despite 1 or 2 of them spending their time looking at a computer screen instead of watching the race. Also, none except the old consultant (Jacky Durand) reads a few pages of regulations in 3 weeks (you'd expect it would rather be the role of the journalist but he spends his time browsing PCS...).
Arrieta (🇪🇸 UAE) became first in the RB classification. Does UAE really need this?
None of the teams with a leader in/near top-10 attempted anything before the final watts contest today: nobody sent people ahead in a breakaway, and nobody tried anything in the first major climb, even after Visma slew down, and nobody had time to try anything in the last climb (before Vingegaard attacked, then there was a little bit of action behind, but the culling had already been performed). There wasn't a single change in top-11 (only Bernal (🇨🇴 Ineos) overperformed a bit compared to his GC rank, but not enough (and he had to drag Arensman🇬🇧 all the way up)). I had fallen asleep when Vingegaard crossed the line, and missed his handlebar licking...
The stage was clearly designed to allow strategical actions. It wasn't a simple, single climb, finish-on-top. There was a 25 km long flat zone between the two major climbs which allowed the team strategy of using as a relay someone sent ahead earlier. And to go ahead earlier, the 3^rd^ category climb 50 km before the first main climb was perfect. They even had moved the I.S. (usually coming much later in the stage) just before it, so that the GC strategy could start after an eventual battle for Cyclamen, not interfering with its preparation and even benefiting of the hesitation that often comes after an I.S.
Visma didn't care about the Blue jersey and gifted it to Ciccone (🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek), who rode more for Vingegaard🇩🇰 than he did for his leader Gee🇨🇦.
Visma also managed to blow up for nothing its own pretender to the White jersey Piganzoli🇮🇹...
Kuss was as useless, or badly used, as usual. His stage victory didn't change this.
Gee helped ciccone at every opportunity and ciccone instantly ran out of energy as soon as it was his turn to work for gee. Ciccone is officialy on my shit list now.
Kudos to gee for jumping into the top 5 all by himself with basically no help from any teammates.
Arensman's corpse had to be dragged uphill by bernal every day, hindley had pellizzari when he needed him....gee had to do it all by himself.
Trek should be ashamed of this giro. Couldnt even get milan a win (hopefully tomorrow with a derek gee leadout)
Ciccone must have put in his contract that he can do whatever he wants during his national tour. I can't see any other logical reason.
I didn't believe in Gee before the tour, or even in the beginning of it; yet after 2 weeks it was clear, even to me, that he could get a nice GC result. As the team was built for fair part around Milan, there wouldn't be much workforce available for help, so it was important that the co-leader would help him, after said co-leader was already offered many personal chances since the beginning of the tour. But no.
Debriefing
In GC, the first Pro-Team riders are :
Tudor and Unibet belong to the 5 major PTs, while Polti is a medium PT: there's no surprise, money talks. Bardiani didn't try to bring a GC guy, I reckon.
EF didn't place anyone in GC. M. Beloki🇪🇸 started well and was just 5-10 minutes behind in GC for 2 weeks, but then he signed his new contract at Ineos, stopped caring about doing something for his current team, and lost almost 2 hours...
Different circumstances but same result for Picnic who brought 3 guys with a climber/GC profile (Barguil-Hamilton-Leemreize), except that none of them has any sort of legs... In 3 weeks, one 9^th^ place for Barguil on a stage won by a breakaway to which he didn't belong, when he just went ahead of a lifeless peloton; and one 10^th^ place by their sprinter. Anyway, nobody cares about anything in this team, so that's fine.
Talking about riders who started well, in the second half of the Giro, O'Connor (🇦🇺 Jayco) lost time and GC positions each time there was some action in the finish; he finished 16^th^ at 24 mn... To a lesser degree, Rondel🇫🇷 also weakened in the second half of the tour, but while he was regularly losing time, the loss was contained so that he didn't lose GC positions after the Time Trial.
Stage 18, Thursday 28
Standings before the stage for a few of the secondary classifications which are still fought over:
Points classification
Many riders can still fight for 3^rd^ place (worth 95 UCI points).
Intermediary Sprints classification
RB Sprints classification
Rubio has been in many breakaways lately.
Mountain classification
Ciccone is going for it, but...
It was very difficult to understand the logic of most teams today, especially in the last 20 km.
Everyone expected a big breakaway and wanted to be in; yet when the peloton finally gave up, it was just composed of 2 Polti ahead (Mifsud🇫🇷/🇲🇹 and M. Bais🇮🇹) who waited for an EF and an Alpecin who were in chasse-patate.
Then 25 km from the line, Lidl-Trek were pushing like crazy, and caught the breakaway several kilometres before the RB bonus sprint, despite having no interest in it, neither for time bonuses, not for RB classification. In fact, they completely stopped their effort when the breakaway was 10 metres ahead of the peloton, and while 3 of them were giving up, the 4^th^ one, Geens (🇧🇪 Alpecin) kept going and reached the RB sprint in first position.
Still at this RB sprint, everyone in the peloton was going slow and blocking riders from behind: riders interested in the RB classification, like the Bardiani riders, couldn't defend their chances. The GC leaders didn't try to score a few easy seconds. Even better, Arensman (🇳🇱 Ineos), who is just 24 seconds behind Gall (and 33 ahead of Hindeley) in GC, could have scored 4 seconds easily, but he scored 0, as his own teammate deprived him of the 2 seconds he could have got without even sprinting, just staying at the front of the peloton behind a Decathlon rider...
Then there was the wall, which was supposed to be the launchpad for a stage victory of punchers. Again, the peloton was riding super fast in the few miles before it. And when the wall started... they all slew down, and nobody attacked. Not a strong puncher, not a small puncher: no one. After a while, only Eulalio (🇵🇹 Barhrain), who had suffered a significant crash 30 or 40 km earlier, attempted something. But he was chased by... Kuss (🇺🇸 Visma) and Vingegaard🇩🇰 pulling the peloton. Why did they do that? What was their objective? Another mystery. There was nothing to win for them.
So it was a sprinter finish, and the fight for Cyclamen is basically over. ☹️
Eulalio has really shown himself to be a rider with panache. Count me as a eulalio fan from now on
gee-west burnt more GC matches again trying to help milan. What a great teammate!
Stage 19, Friday 29
Massive GPM points are available today: 162! Here is the current Blue jersey classification:
Yep, Vingegaard🇩🇰 went to grab the points of the 4^th^ category climb today...
Lol the rubio drama alone is worth watching the stage
Another second for gee, :( We used to call this saganth place but we should rename it
I love eulalio more and more every day
Like Scaroni the other day, Narvaez (🇪🇨 UAE) was dropped and withdrew early in the stage. While this confirms that Magnier will get the Cyclamen jersey, it opens one seat on the podium of that classification. This evening, points are such:
As there are 12 points on each of the 2 remaining I.S. and Magnier doesn't need to score any extra point any more, getting/staying on that podium can be an important goal for those riders and their team, especially Astana, Uno-X and Polti.
Stage 21, Sunday 31
I found it appalling that UAE went for the RB sprint to deprive Rubio (🇪🇸 Movistar) of 5.000 €...
There were many little breakaways. The most significant was by Ganna (🇮🇹 Ineos), which was only caught 3 km from the line. He had 2 dead weights in his wheel who never pulled one second: Sobrero (🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek) and Stuyven (🇧🇪 Soudal-QS). It was a bit more understandable by Sobrero🇮🇹 as he didn't stand much chances vs the other 2 and Milan🇮🇹 was really eager to finally get his first victory, but Stuyven🇧🇪, seriously... I was thinking it was a pity Ganna🇮🇹 had those guys with him and not others like Maestri🇮🇹, and he counter-attacked just when Ganna🇮🇹's breakaway was finally caught, so yes, he was pissed he wasn't in that breakaway 😃; but beside Maestri🇮🇹, anyone collaborating a little bit would have made this breakaway beat the peloton as the sprinter teams behind were loosing all their elements.
Anyway, Soudal-QS was punished by an utterly shitty sprint of Magnier🇫🇷, who was a bit blocked, but above all was completely cooked, as even the uphill false-flat was too much for him. Stuyven🇧🇪 would have had 80% chances of winning if he had relayed Ganna🇮🇹 a bit...