Giro d'Italia | Richard Carapaz takes stellar win as stage 11 turns into all-out GC day
CyclingWednesday, 21 May 2025 at 17:02
Stage 11 of the Giro d'Italia was a very hard day on paper but most expected the breakaway to fight for victory. Whilst the front group did have the strength, several teams made the effort to attack the stage and Richard Carapaz has taken an impressive solo victory to gain time on his GC rivals.
A stage that looked set for a breakaway to succeed, but as was the case in stage 8 there was a very long and hard battle to get in the breakaway on the flat roads out of Viareggio. A large group went up the road before the climb to San Pellegrino, but the ascent's difficulty ended up quickly splitting the front group only to those who could hold the pace of Lorenzo Fortunato who went in pursuit of further KOM points.
Fortunato was joined, after the summit of the climb, by teammate Wout Poels, Luke Plapp, Nairo Quintana and Pello Bilbao. Formally, this became the breakaway of the day and in the peloton there was action on this climb, with the tough pace breaking the group to only a few dozen, and an attack from Egan Bernal seeing only the response from Isaac del Toro and Juan Ayuso - which later saw a few more join and eventually stalling.
It seemed as if the GC action for the day was done, taking into consideration the conservative behaviour of the peloton before this stage, but it wasn't the case. Lidl-Trek and EF Education, besides UAE Team Emirates - XRG's gap control, have pushed the pace quite a lot and have managed to bring the strong quintet back in the bottom of the final climb.
Here EF set a very sharp pace right from the base and Richard Carapaz launched an explosive attack with 9 kilometers to go with no response. An attack from Isaac del Toro shortly after exploded the group but it came back together afterwards. Carapaz rode to a stellar solo win, a very popular one, and proving his worth in the fight for the Giro win.
Isaac del Toro sprinted to second place to increase his lead over Juan Ayuso and Primoz Roglic, whilst Giulio Ciccone also took a few seconds in bonifications.
Read also
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
LiveBlog
claps 2visitors 2
Just in
Popular news
Latest comments
- lol so true. hunt stages. pidcock is the most perplexing rider in the pelotonmij08-06-2025
- Nice to see Jonas coming out of his shell, both during and after the race. Wonder what he said that made Tadej react 'Oh really?!'.Renz08-06-2025
- ah
KerisVroom08-06-2025 - Jonas wanted to congratulate Tadej, that's all. He was distracted.
maria2024202408-06-2025 - A podium would have kept the streak going, but winning makes it even stronger. Since Jebel Hafeet at the UAE Tour, across Strade Bianchi and 4 monuments, he has been no worse than third. 9 consecutive podiums, 6 wins on the road, one GC. Good lord.RidesHills08-06-2025
- Fantastic and unexpected! a Jonas in Tadej style! My fear was that Jonas might be too worried (a bit paralyzed) by the risks of cycling after his crashes.. I'm very happy to see that it's not the case.maria2024202408-06-2025
- Weird that Jonas pulled his hand away from MvDP when MvDP wanted to congratulate him on the 2nd place.KerisVroom08-06-2025
- His team's management, coaches, and agent likely have better insight
Front24208-06-2025 - "I did my best-ever hour in terms of power and was seven minutes behind. The thing is, for me, I've never raced up an hour-long climb before. And I've never trained for an hour-long effort" Bro why are you doing GC for god's sake when you have not the talent, the capacity, the training for GCabstractengineer08-06-2025
- Yes it was shocking to lose the Jersey in such a fashion and there was far to much questionable riding between the top 4, often being saved because Gee was trying to get into the top 3 but riding like was 2nd half the time when was just the 4 of them. The fact Isaac held on for so long given that, at his age was incredible and well worth a celebration. Its his team that truely failed him by chasing down when had dropped Yates(?) that stage and was gonna strengthen his lead and had Gee for IPT riding hard to help (again) to try and get 3rd but stupidly UAE chased it down and that cost the race.HoopoeChai08-06-2025
That was a very nice ride by Richard Carapaz. His team set him up perfectly for that attack.
Like a said just a few days ago in the comments, look out for Carapaz!
We’ll see. I’m still trying to figure out how GT cycling went from being a climbing defined event to a 3 week event around a couple of short TTs. All the contenders more or less cancel each other climbing and then grow huge (as the media defines the time spans now) gaps when riding on bikes not made for GTs, quite ironic really.
I hope so. Or was it just to show that he is still worth another good contract?
That does seem to be an ever more common motivation for sudden performance ;-)
Don't forget the roster is weak compared to the Tadej and Jonas show, Carapaz has won the Giro before back in 2019. He was the only guy who could match Tadej and Jonas in the mountains in the 2021 Tour. He could take this race.