“We did nothing wrong... the front wheel just slipped away” - Dylan Groenewegen suffers brutal bad luck as perfect Unibet leadout is ruined by late Giro d’Italia crash

For several kilometres through Napoli, Unibet Rose Rockets looked like the team that had got everything right. On a finale packed with bends, pinch points and cobbled sections, Dylan Groenewegen’s leadout train held position when it mattered most, guiding the Dutch sprinter through the chaos and into what looked like a winning launchpad.

Then, with the finish line almost in sight, the opportunity vanished. Groenewegen crashed on the final corner, his front wheel slipping away on the slick surface just as Unibet’s work seemed ready to be converted into a Giro d’Italia stage win.

Davide Ballerini eventually took victory after the sprint was completely disrupted, beating Jasper Stuyven in the reshuffled finale. For Groenewegen, though, the defining feeling was not frustration with his team. It was the cruelty of seeing a near-perfect leadout undone by one moment of bad luck.

Speaking to Cycling Pro Net after the finish, Groenewegen refused to blame the riders around him. “Sometimes you have bad luck,” he said. “I’m really proud of the boys today and we look forward. Now we need a bit of recovery, I think, and then we go to the next opportunity.”

Unibet had been prominent for much of the technical run-in, taking control as the peloton hit the final kilometres and threading Groenewegen through the narrowing roads towards the cobbled finish in Napoli.

The late approach was tense even before the crash. Rain had begun to fall near the finish, with the surface becoming increasingly dangerous just as the sprint trains entered the most technical part of the finale. Groenewegen was well placed as Unibet led under the final kilometre banner, but the decisive moment came on the last corner.

“It was a bit slippery,” he explained. Asked whether the team had simply been going too fast on the cobbles despite holding such a good position, Groenewegen was clear that he did not believe Unibet had made a mistake. “I’m really proud of the boys. I think we did nothing wrong. Then just our front wheel slipped away. That can happen on the cobbles.”

Groenewegen had already been recovering from an opening-day crash, and the latest fall appeared to leave him sore again on his right side. “It’s again stiff,” he said when asked about his shoulder. “It takes some days and then it will be okay again, I think.”

He added: “It’s never nice to crash, but it’s just a little bit stiff.”

The result will sting because of how close Unibet appeared to be to pulling off the stage plan. Through the final kilometres, they had kept their structure while other teams fought for position, setting Groenewegen up for the kind of sprint where timing and placement were expected to be decisive. Instead, the crash blew the finale apart and turned what had looked like a golden chance into another painful Giro near miss.

For Groenewegen, the message afterwards was simple. The legs were there, the leadout was there, and the next chance now has to come after another recovery from another fall.