OPINION | A Giro d'Italia won and lost in 2 gravel sectors

I think that Simon Yates' victory in the Giro d'Italia 2025 has a lot of merit after 2018, that Richard Carapaz's return to fight for a grand tour is commendable and that the breakthrough of Isaac del Toro is wonderful, but I think that a 21-day grand tour should ask for more than what has happened in the recent corsa rosa, which in my opinion was decided in a couple of sterrato sectors and that the rest of thousands of kilometers were rather useless.

Our colleagues at CiclismoAlDia analyzed the most recent Corsa Rosa and one of the main points to take away from the race was that the two stages in which the race was decided, were the ones that featured the sterrato sectors. The first key moment of the race, the one that allowed the three riders mentioned above to play it out, was the crash in the ninth stage, the mini Strade Bianche, of Primoz Roglic and Juan Ayuso.

The two main favourites for the overall didn't lift their heads from then on, which caused the race to go crazy, with Del Toro taking seconds in several stages, Bernal attacking from far away and Carapaz believing it. That crash took the quality out of the Giro. It evened it down and meant that when the high mountains arrived, almost nothing happened. Until the sterrato.

Yes, because that's where the Giro was decided again. In the final part of the climb to Finestre. The Giro was not decided by Simon Yates' attack. Nor with the work of Wout van Aert. The Giro was decided when Carapaz and Del Toro, 'you for me and me for you', stopped collaborating and let the British rider reach the top of Finestre with nothing more and nothing less than 2 minutes.

Del Toro, who had accumulated precisely in sterrato in his breakaway with Van Aert the advantage that made him so many days maglia rosa, decided in that stretch of stage 20 that it was not time to fight. It was time to let Simon Yates go. And that was the end of the race. A Giro summarized in 2 sections of sterrato. And it is that when something becomes fashionable, it triumphs...