It was a manic few days at Cycling Weekly towers last week as we rushed to complete our Giro d’Italia preview magazine, with the added thrill of a UK bank holiday thrown in. The 109th edition of the Italian Grand Tour begins on Friday, and we worked hard to create the most up-to-date guide for the race, on sale on Thursday.
The print deadline was made all the harder to meet by late team name changes – thanks Netcompany-Ineos – jersey switch-outs, and also riders dropping out of the race. Richard Carapaz, João Almeida and Max Poole all skipping the Giro required a furious rewrite. Perhaps more pertinently to the race, the lack of these contenders will give Jonas Vingegaard less to think about on his quest for the maglia rosa.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
No other general classification hopeful within the UCI’s top-15 will line up, with Tadej Pogačar, Isaac del Toro, Remco Evenepoel, Tom Pidcock, Paul Seixas, Florian Lipowitz and Almeida all absent. Giulio Pellizzari, Felix Gall, Jay Vine and Egan Bernal are all solid GC options, and Bernal is even a former winner, but the last time any of them finished ahead of Vingegaard overall at a stage race was the 2021 Tour of Norway, when Gall finished 68th to Vingegaard’s 76th.
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While other teams have faced disruption or changed lineups, Visma-Lease a Bike have a settled eight, which includes riders like Victor Campenaerts, Sepp Kuss and Wilco Kelderman who have been training specifically to help their leader out over three weeks in Bulgaria and Italy. If everything goes to plan for them, Vingegaard will complete the set of Grand Tour titles.
If the race was ridden on stats alone, on paper, then the Dane would walk this Giro; he has won six times in 2026, including Paris-Nice and the Volta a Catalunya, and is the overwhelming favourite according to form and betting odds. Fortunately for us, that is not how bike races work, however.
There are no foregone conclusions, and anything could happen. Illness, a crash, a surprise contender are all possibilities. This is Vingegaard’s first time racing the Giro, so there will be surprises in store, from the weather to the Italian roads. Last year, Mikel Landa’s GC bid ended on stage one, while very few people were banking the eventual winner Simon Yates until that famous surge on the Finestre on stage 20. Odd things occur at the Giro.
While there might not be many A-list contenders for the overall, there are riders who will make a mark at the Italian stage race. Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe’s Pellizzari won the recent Tour of the Alps in impressive fashion, pushed hard by the Netcompany-Ineos pair of Bernal and Thymen Arensman. Red Bull, in fact, have a strong team, with former champion Jai Hindley and Aleksandr Vlasov both pushing their younger Italian leader forward. UAE might not have Almeida, but they do have Vine, Jan Christen and Adam Yates, with the latter looking to become the second Yates in a row to win. Vingegaard is the overwhelming favourite, but he does not have the same level of seeming invulnerability as Pogačar.
It is easy to be hyperbolic, to write the whole race off already. The beauty of a three-week Grand Tour is that narratives develop, characters emerge, and things can change. Let’s not skip to Rome. There will be action packed into every stage, from the Balkans to the Dolomites. The race this year is pleasingly organised, with must-watch stages parcelled out throughout. Now all we need is for the race to actually begin.
This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.
If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.
