PREVIEW | Giro d'Italia 2025 stage 15

The Corsa Rosa is the first Grand Tour of the season and this year it will include a start in a nation that will for the first time in it's history host a Grand Tour, Albania; and also several mountain stages in it's second half whilst the first half will feature some tricky stages including one that goes through a lot of the Strade Bianche course. We preview stage 15.

Giro fans will remember this finale, which hosted the finale of the final mountain day of the 2017 Giro d'Italia. A successful combo on that day, and the race directors are hoping to see similar action on the final day of the second week, featuring the fearful Monte Grappa and the climb to Dori en route to a rolling finale in Asiago.

A whole 219 kilometers on the menu means that endurance will once again become a feature, something the Tour de France organizers did not really think about. The Giro provides a lot of this challenge, which can make mountain days more interesting and with more unexpected twists. Early in the day the riders face the famous Muro di Ca' del Poggio which is extremely steep, but will be early in the day and won't serve as a platform to launch attacks.

Later on however, the climbs become very long. Not through it's most difficult side, but the riders will take on Monte Grappa, 25 kilometers long at 5.7%, a climb that will take around an hour and honestly it features gradients that are hard enough to launch serious attacks. It's the final day of the second week, will someone try? Possibly, but unlikely, as the climb still ends with 91 kilometers to go.

The descent will be long, steep and technical, and then there will be some rolling roads until the final climb to Dori. 16.6 kilometers at 5.3% makes a different challenge than some others, it's a big-ring climb where the gradients never go above 10%... It's not the typical ascent for a brutal mountain day, but in these circumstances it definitely can be enough to make the difference.

But it is the potential for tactical racing that makes this finale even more interesting. After so much climbing (this ends with 28Km to go), there is a descent and then a steep uphill ramp of 8% during 1.5 kilometers that end with 20 kilometers to go. But there never really is any big descent...

The entire finale is rolling, in a plateau road that leads to the town of Asiago and where attacks can come at all times. Away from the climbs, the GC riders will go head-to-head on terrain where they are not specialists in, and where a lot of interesting things can happen.

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