David Stanley
A Look Back at the 2025 Giro d'Italia
David Stanley is an experienced cycling writer. His work has appeared in Velo, Velo-news.com, Road, Peloton, and the late, lamented Bicycle Guide (my favorite all-time cycling magazine). Here's his Facebook page. He is also a highly regarded voice artist with many audiobooks to his credit, including McGann Publishing's The Story of the Tour de France and Cycling Heroes.
David L. Stanley
David L. Stanley's masterful telling of his bout with skin cancer Melanoma: It Started with a Freckle is available in print, Kindle eBook and audiobook versions, just click on the Amazon link on the right.
David L. Stanley writes:
Giro d’Italia25 defied all the pundits, soothsayers, and experts. We saw riders dominate their categories. We saw brave, everyday riders take chances. We watched exceptional teammates. We watched tactical blunders writ large for all the cycling world to dissect. And we saw that no matter how sure we are about how a race will play out, we will be wrong.
1) It’s not often that a rider so dominates a category that they have double the points at race end from their nearest competitor. Yet, that would be Mads Peterson down to the ground. As I write this at the start of Sunday’s Stage 21 finale, the LIDL-Trek man sits on 277 points in the points competiton. Visma | Lease a Bike man Olav Kooj is second at 135. Visma | Lease a Bike teammate extraordinaire Wout van Aert is at 127. On top of that exceptional consistency and dominance, Mads also took stages 1,3,5 and 13.
Mads Pedersen started off the Giro by winning stage one. Sirotti photo
It happens with sprinters. They go on a tear that only exceptional confidence can generate. Much of sprinting is not just sheer speed. It requires power, great teammates to save the legs throughout the day, and a high-quality lead-out to launch at the line in the closing 2-400 meters. It also requires a high level of caginess and confidence. You may have all the physical tools to win elite races, yet if you lack the “Act well without thinking” tool kit of a martial arts master, you will not win races. Mads Petersen had all of that on display these three weeks in the Giro. A worthy winner of the ciclamino.
2) Wout van Aert. WvA was the MVP. Without Wout, Simon Yates does not win Giro25. Full stop. WvA’s work: to get in the early move, stay in the break up the Colle de Finestre, and then, provide the TGVanAert across the valley floor for Simon Yates as they headed towards Sestrière. How fast was WvA? He kept that train a’rollin’ at record speeds. His Strava account showed that the 30-year-old WvA set a KOM across the valley.
Wout van Aert was there, waiting for Simon Yates.
In one 13-kilometer segment, he was a minute and a half faster than Brandon McNulty. Brandon, no slouch at speed himself, had his captain Del Toro on his wheel. Van Aert achieved his best-ever hourly average: 428 watts for 60 minutes. With Simon Yates on his wheel, we all sat in awe as Yatesy saw his gap grow from two minutes to five minutes, plenty of time to establish Simon as the putative maglia rosa. It was tactical brilliance that got WvA into the early move, his huge pair of lungs that kept him there, and the Heart of a Lion (Thank-you, Peter Joffrey Nye) that saw Wout bury himself (yes, pun intended) for his team leader. We all heard this from the V-LAB car. “Wout, you are the game changer!” Visma-Lease a Bike directeur sportif Marc Reef shouted to him as Van Aert came to a near-halt after his superhuman effort.
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We all heard Simon Yates in the post-race interview: "It's not the first time that he (WvA) shows himself to be one of the best teammates in the world, and at the same time a huge champion. I am incredibly grateful to him and the rest of the team," Yates said.
In response, we heard WvA: "It's incredible. I’m as happy and proud as if I had won myself. When I was in the breakaway and we got a lot of time on the peloton, I knew I had a small chance of surviving the Finestre. I played a role but this is an achievement by the entire team. I can’t explain how deep I went to survive that climb. Halfway up I knew I could do it, but it was the hardest moment of the day.
"What a brave effort from Simon to go all in from that far out. I love it when people don't race for a place of honour. 'Chapeau' to him."
What a sportsman! Chapeau to Wout van Aert!
3) Let’s talk Yates. Simon Yates flew up the Finestre. In the valley, he encountered his teammate van Aert. Flew? Yes, flew. According to Climbing Records, he completed the 18.3 kilometers of sadomasochistic climbing in less than an hour: the British rider took just 59 minutes and 22 seconds to conquer the Colle de Finestre, smashing the record on that climb. Pablo Torres, the prior record holder, needed 1.2 minutes more to summit. Carapaz and Del Toro were 15 seconds slower than the previous record. The last time the Giro came this way was 2018. Chris Froome took charge of the Giro. He took 1 hour, 4 minutes, 20 seconds: almost 5 minutes slower than his chief competition, Simon Yates, who Froomey knocked out of the pink jersey that day.
Giro stage 20: Simon Yates is gone. RCS photo
Richard Carapaz's early move made the Finestre truly tough. After lagging behind, Yates caught up with Del Toro and Carapaz. Yates attacked, attacked again, and on his third effort, he was gone. From that point forward, he was well into his red zone, and he danced on both his pedals and his power output as a Baryshnikov.
Full marks, plus extra credit for Simon to ride far beyond any limits he may have felt he had. Yet, let’s talk about the tactics of the opposition.
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4) Tactics. Near as I can discover, Fabio Baldato was in the car during Stage 20. I can’t find anything to dispute this, on video or in press reports, so I could be wrong. Still, as the head DS, this is on him and his associates.
WHAT THE HELL WAS THE UAE TEAM EMIRATES BRAINTRUST THINKING?
As the stage unrolled up the defining climb, my first thought was to unload a slew of invective at Isaac del Toro. How could he possibly allow his win at Giro25 to head up the road alone? Suddenly, it hit me. He is a 21-year-old kid in the toughest situation of his racing life, exhausted after weeks of defending, with much glory and grinta, his maglia rosa. This is why a DS is in place; to think when the athlete is too spent to think clearly. What was his DS saying in his ear?
Isaac del Toro (in pink) with Richard Carapaz as Simon Yates attacks. At this point the Giro is truly in play.
Let’s review the job of a DS on race day. The job is to analyze all the possible tactical situations, and choose the one situation that gives his rider the best possible chance at a win. Simultaneously, devise a Plan B, should Plan A fail to pan out. Most importantly, put PLAN A into his rider’s head with a level of confidence that will inspire his rider to succeed. Baldato, et al, failed. Failed miserably.
a) UAE seriously misjudged Carapaz. For Richard Carapaz, it was win or nothing. With one Giro win already in his palmares (2019), he was not going to slay himself for 2nd over 3rd place. 2nd is nice. 3rd is fine. Neither counts as a win, eh? Carapaz could not drop del Toro. We all saw that. 2nd There was no way Carapaz could win the overall with del Toro clinging like a limpet to his back wheel. So, why do all the work? Make del Toro share the load.
b) UAE seriously underestimated Simon Yates and his glorious climbing prowess. I am also certain they didn’t realize the fury which would consume Wout van Aert on the way across the valley floor after the Finistere. As Lao-Tzu said, “There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent.” UAE failed three-fold, in fact. They also overestimated del Toro’s ability to ditch Carapaz on a climb.
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c) As the movie, GIRO25, played out, it was still not too late to unleash del Toro and have him drag Richard Carapaz to the finish. He takes Carapaz to the finish, maybe he loses a handful of seconds. Maybe two handfuls? What was the likelihood Isaac del Toro loses all 43 seconds that would give the Ecuadorian the title? Doesn’t matter. Simon Yates started the day 1min 21sec in arrears to del Toro. When the clock hit 60 seconds of lead and building, it should’ve been like a giant boulder flying down a tunnel, taking dead aim on Baldato’s vehicle (yes, I watched an Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade, last night), spurring Baldato into shouts of VENGA! VENGA! VENGA! at 105 decibels in young Isaac’s ear. The hell with Richard Carapaz and this petty little pissing match. “GO! GO! GO! – you’ve worked too hard for two weeks to let Yates ride away in one day with that pink jersey which you earned! Which You Deserve! You are the BEST!! VENGA VAMOS!”
Isaac del Toro ended up 2nd in the GC and the Best Young Rider, hence the white jersey. Sirotti photo
None of that happened. Not one little bit. Chapeau to the lad from Bury!
To close, a shout-out to German Alexander Krieger of Tudor Pro Cycling. Mr. Krieger made it to the finish, intact, upright and in 159th place, 6:25:03 behind Simon Yates, to claim the Maglia Nera, the black jersey that in years past was awarded to the last place man in the Giro. Just for comparison’s sake, the Lanterne Rouge for the 2024 Tour de France was Mark Cavendish who came 141st, 6:23:11 in arrears to Tadej Pogačar.
A moment, too, of silence and shared grief for Robert Gesink. The famed Dutch ex-pro rode his entire career for the iterations of Visma | Lease a Bike. His wife passed away over the weekend. Daisy leaves behind, in addition to her husband and parents and siblings, her two children Bram and Anne. All of us here at BikeRaceInfo offer our deepest compassion and sympathy.
Robert Gesink at the 2022 Vuelta a España. To him we send our most heartfelt condolences
David Stanley, like nearly all of us, has spent his life working and playing outdoors. He got a case of Melanoma as a result. Here's his telling of his beating that disease. And when you go out, please put on sunscreen.