Giulio Ciccone’s 2025 season over? Italian in last-minute withdrawal from Giro dell’Emilia with Il Lombardia in serious doubt

Giulio Ciccone’s stop-start 2025 campaign looks to have hit another unwelcome twist, with Lidl-Trek confirming on Saturday morning that the Italian will not start the Giro dell’Emilia due to illness. The announcement comes just days after his return from the UCI Road World Championships in Kigali, where he represented Italy in the elite men’s road race.

“Unfortunately, Giulio Ciccone will not be at the start line of the first Italian one-day races, including today’s Giro dell’Emilia, due to illness upon his return home from the World Championships,” Lidl–Trek wrote on social media. “No decision yet on whether he will still race Il Lombardia.”

The news marks a frustrating end to what has been a turbulent year for Ciccone. His 2025 season has oscillated between promising flashes of brilliance and persistent setbacks.

Back in April, he opened his account in style with victory on Stage 1 of the Tour of the Alps, showing signs that he had rediscovered his sharp climbing form after a disrupted 2024. But that momentum was cruelly halted in May at the Giro d’Italia, where a crash and subsequent quadriceps injury forced him to abandon his home Grand Tour midway through the race.

After a lengthy recovery, Ciccone returned to action over the summer and looked back to his best. He won the Clásica San Sebastián in commanding fashion, attacking solo on the Murgil-Tontorra to hold off a charging group including Jan Christen and Isaac Del Toro. A few weeks later, he claimed another victory atop Lagunas de Neila at the Vuelta a Burgos, before heading to the Vuelta a España with ambitions of a top-ten finish.

That too was derailed, however, by an untimely infection that forced him to drop out of general classification contention midway through the Spanish Grand Tour — despite having earlier finished second to Jonas Vingegaard on the summit finish at Limone Piemonte.

Ciccone’s latest illness now threatens to bring down the curtain on a year that, while studded with standout moments, never quite allowed him to string together sustained form. The uncertainty over his participation in next weekend’s Il Lombardia — the race he has long called his “home Monument” — will be a bitter pill to swallow for both rider and fans.

Should he miss the ‘Race of the Falling Leaves’, Ciccone will close 2025 with just 25 race days since the Giro, albeit with two prestigious wins that underline his enduring class when fit.

For a rider whose season began with such promise and who had seemingly turned a corner after the Giro setback, the timing of this illness could hardly be crueller. Whether he lines up in Como next weekend or not, 2025 will go down as a year of resilience, frustration, and glimpses of the old Giulio Ciccone brilliance that Italian cycling still hopes to see fully unleashed once more.