More UAE joy as Alessandro Covi powers to the win on stage 1 of Giro d'Abruzzo 2025
CyclingTuesday, 15 April 2025 at 15:31
UAE Team Emirates - XRG's Alessandro Covi has taken the win on the opening stage of the 2025 Giro d'Abruzzo, in the process securing the first leader's jersey of this year's edition of the Italian stage race, continuing his team's winning start to the season.
The all-Italian trio of Diego Bracalente (MBH Bank Ballan CSB), Matteo Zurlo (S.C. Padovani Polo Cherry Bank) and Cristian Remelli (General Store - Essegibi - F.Lli Curia) got themselves into the day's breakaway. With 32 kilometres still to go however, they had all been swallowed up by the UAE Team Emirates - XRG led peloton.
As the race began to split up again, the next move saw 8 riders get themselves clear, including notable names such as Louis Meintjes, Damien Howson, Harm Vanhoucke, Alessandro Tonelli, Ivo Oliveira and Martin Marcellusi. As they worked well together in the lead group, with 15km to go, they had built up an advantage of 30 seconds. It wasn't to be for the attackers though, as they too were caught with just under 7km to go.
In the punchy, uphill final kilometre to the line, it was then UAE's Alessandro Covi who powered to the victory ahead of Bardiani's Luca Colnaghi in a brutally attritional final sprint.
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- Agreed. What is the point of this? The pros should just start a new league and break away from the UCI. Let it sinkmij19-04-2025
- Who even cares? It’s the goal of a bike race to ride as fast as possible? And that’s what we want to see?? This is maybe the dumbest article ever.mij19-04-2025
- This is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. It's an advantage to the person who does his best power at the highest RPM. This rule was dumb in junior races and would be dumb at the pro level.acem8219-04-2025
- More and more guys to share the spoils, of which he didn’t get many when he had a better chance. Looks thinner. I hope he enjoys battling for the Giro, maybe good for him to focus on a different kind of goal.Mistermaumau19-04-2025
- I watched the last 40k. Wout's body lanquage spoke volumes. In the last 10k. Remco was nose breathing. Wouts jaw was dropping with his mouth wide open he was just hanging on. He made a good fist of disguising it and taking turns, you could see that he was tiring. This will do him good, he will come good I'm sure. It's getting harder and harder though with Pogagar and Evenpoel around.Cyclingsbestfan18-04-2025
- Maybe his knee injury and subsequent power loss on that leg. Otherwise, there is no reason why Wout can't score a win this season.
KerisVroom18-04-2025 - Sure, hopefully Islam will work out for the best. There's a first time for everything.bobo18-04-2025
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- Not too fast. An hour faster than 40 years ago with far better surfaces, equipment and nutrition plus it was dry and had the wind behind a lot of the time.JWB18-04-2025
- I’m pretty sure they have their priorities in a good order and they both seem to be the opposite of those who try to dictate their beliefs onto others,Mistermaumau18-04-2025