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Welcome to this week’s edition of the newsletter! We are just over halfway through the Giro d’Italia, and so much has happened already – I hope you’re enjoying the race. It’s always a weird place to be, deeply entrenched halfway through a Grand Tour, gripped by the unfolding storylines yet still with no idea how it’s all going to play out. It’s even better when there isn’t a clear front-runner, and this year’s race couldn’t be more finely poised. There are other races on too and some things might have happened in the news but it’s quite hard to drag myself out of the pink and ciclamino flavoured hole that I’ve settled in for the duration of May - but let’s see if I can muster a few headlines, shall we?
ON THE WEBSITE
The website has been quiet, as I’ve been publishing my race updates on the Substack – so head on over to catch up on everything you’ve missed at the Giro.
The first post is part race report part memoir as I recount the ways in which I tried to keep up with the race during a particularly busy weekend with the family.
The second is a lengthy tome which I started writing several times over and only managed to finish after a full week’s worth of stages had elapsed.
If you’d like a more straightforward reportage on the stages, the Race Report section over at the website is where it’s all.
ON THE POD
Sanny and I have been convening on a semi-regular basis to comb through the stories of each stage of the race, so if you prefer your cycling chat delivered aurally, head to wherever you get your podcasts, and get yourselves caught up.
NEWS! NEWS! HERE IS SOME NEWS!
Top story: Lifetime contract for Mads
It seems a week doesn’t go by in cycling without a big name rider announcing that they’ve secured their long-term future to their team, and this week’s was bang on trend, as maglia rosa and three-time Giro stage winner (well, he’d only won two at that point) Mads Pedersen revealed that he would spend the rest of his cycling career at Lidl-Trek. Pedersen has been at the American team since 2017 and seems very comfortable and settled there, and is clearly well loved by his teammates. The announcement itself was the epitome of cool – check it out, if you haven’t seen it yet.
Top story: Montmartre for Le Tour
As was rumoured some months ago, ASO confirmed that the iconic cobbled climb of Montmartre in Paris will feature as part of the final stage of this year’s Tour de France. The traditional flat stage finishing on the Champs-Elysée has been eschewed in favour of the showpiece climb, which featured prominently in last summer’s Olympic Games, and a stage which has been a glorified procession in recent years will change shape significantly, as the three repeats of the circuit will give a totally different flavour to the last day of the Tour, and ensure that it’s a race of 21 stages, not 20 and a final sprint (or at least, not one for the pure sprinters). However you view the change, there’s no doubt it’s a bold choice by ASO, and it will certainly be a sight to behold come July.
Top story: Vingegaard critical of concussion protocols
Following his crash at Paris-Nice in March, Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) has criticised in-race concussion protocols. Speaking in a press conference earlier this week, Vingegaard said he was not checked for concussion during the race, despite the fact that his glasses were broken and he had blood on his face.
“I went to the race doctor because I had some blood on my face – I was bleeding – but they never once checked me for concussion, which I find a bit odd, to be honest,” he said. Vingegaard has called the incident “maybe the most stupid crash that I’ve ever had.”
TRANSFER RUMOUR ROUND-UP
Not too much to report, surprisingly given all the action that must be going on behind the scenes at the Giro, but one young rider drawing a lot of attention will be Davide Piganzoli of Polti VisitMalta – Daniel Benson reports that the 22-year-old Italian is set to head to Visma-Lease a Bike.
Enric Mas has extended his contract with Movistar until the end of 2029, Roger Adrià (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) may also be headed to the Spanish team, according to Benson.
Meanwhile, Ben Tulett has just extended his contract with Visma-Lease A Bike, while Soudal-QuickStep’s owner Jurgen Foré has quashed the ongoing rumours of Remco Evenepoel moving to INEOS, or anywhere else besides, stating categorically that Remco would be riding for the team until the end of 2026, when his contract expires.
AND FINALLY… SOME PERSONAL NEWS
You may or may not have seen news of the new Domestique website around, depending on how often you frequent social media, but I’m excited to report that I’ve joined the team bringing the new site to life, as part of the editorial team. It’s a site designed to be a one-stop shop for all your pro bike racing needs, and with a whole host of amazing sponsors, partners and collaborations, there will be something for everyone, from the more traditional media – think previews, race reports and stats – through to innovative content produced by a range of amazing creators, from opinion pieces, to vlogs, to audio columns and more. There are a host of riders on board too to take us inside the peloton - it’s really going to be something different, so keep your eyes open as the site launches on 3rd June. I hope you’ll check it out – there will be plenty to read and look at on the site, and it will continue to grow as we move towards the Tour de France and beyond.
Don’t worry though – this newsletter is here to stay. You’re not getting rid of me that easily!
OH HAPPY DAY! GIRO SPECIAL
Celebrating the lighter side of the sport… This time in Italy
The Giro d’Italia social media accounts are doing great work bringing the race to life, with a great deal of humour along the way. Here are some of their best bits from the past couple of weeks…
Breakaway brothers in arms… One of my favourite subgenres of cycling imagery is ‘breakaway companions congratulate one another on a hard day’s work’. Here are Enzo Paleni and Taco van der Hoorn after that ill-fated stage - love them.
Kaden disappearing… Kaden Groves decides he’s had enough of this racing malarkey and tries to hide.
Eurovision special… In case you haven’t heard THAT Estonian Eurovision entry, the riders of the Giro are here to bring you up to speed.
All aboard the Carapaz express… When Richard Carapaz gets going, there’s no stopping him…
ROAD RACING RESULTS ROUND-UP
Time to catch up on some racing! If you’re in search of news about the Giro, check out my Substack posts above, or head on over to the website for a more concise run-down. Here is everything else you’ve missed, in the meantime.
I left you part-way through La Vuelta España Femenina (4-10 May). Stage 6 was a final chance for the women with fast finishes, and it came down to a head-to-head between the green jersey Marianne Vos, and Team SD Worx-ProTime’s Mischa Bredewold. In the end, Vos nicked it in the photo finish, to take her second stage of the week and seal the points competition. The final stage was the second of two summit finishes, and just as she did on the first, Demi Vollering took the opportunity to stamp her authority on the race, winning the stage and wrapping up the overall, ahead of Marlen Reusser and Anna van der Breggen, with Cédrine Kerbaol making a major step up to prove her worth as a GC rider, finishing in fourth.
The women’s Spanish racing block continued with the Navarra Elite Classic (14 May) one-day race was won by the ever-dangerous Cat Ferguson (Movistar), finally raising her arms for the first time this season. Another young rider making waves was Lidl-Trek’s Isabella Holmgren, who won her first pro race at Durango-Durango (20 May), holding off a quality field to announce her arrival on the World Tour.
There were two more stage races – first up, Itzulia Women (16-18 May), where Demi Vollering continued to exert her dominance, winning her third edition of the race out of the four that have taken place so far (she came second only to her teammate at the time, Marlen Reusser, in the other edition). Vollering won the queen stage, almost a minute ahead of the next best rider, Canadian Sarah van Dam (Ceratizit0WNT), who is having a break-out season. The first two stages were both won by Mischa Bredewold (Team SD Worx-ProTime) – Bredewold has really stepped up another level this season and is proving herself to be an excellent all-rounder.
And to bring us bang up to date, the final Spanish stage race is currently underway. The Vuelta Burgos (22-25 May) has a strong start list which includes world champion Lotte Kopecky and Elisa Longo Borghini. The first stage came down to a sprint where undisputed speed queen Lorena Wiebes (Team SD Worx-ProTime) beat Elisa Balsamo to take the leader’s jersey. She lost it on stage 2 however, as the race broke up on the final climb, with Marlen Reusser striking out a few kilometres from the finish line – with her went Norwegian champion Mie Bjørndal Ottestad (Uno-X Mobility), and Ottestad was superior in the sprint to the line – she takes the leader’s jersey into today’s stage 3. More on that next time!
FOCUS ON: Coupe de France, Brittany edition
In case I haven’t made it patently obvious in the past, I love France. I love French riders, I’m a big fan of French teams, and French races – well, I think they’re pretty great too. I’ve developed a weird obsession with the Coupe de France as a series – I love how open and unpredictable the racing is, how it’s a chance to see a whole load of riders you don’t normally get to see at the pointy end of races – both French and non-French – and I find the races to be a breath of fresh air on many levels.
While the selection of races that are included in the series vary slightly year on year, and don’t bear a great deal of connection to one another, beyond ‘being in France,’ there are a couple of natural peaks in the action throughout the year, that produce their own mini narrative arcs. One of those is the series of four races in the Bretagne region that unfolded last weekend. They got somewhat lost in the cycling media as they often do, running concurrently with the Giro’s Grande Partenza, but each and every one of them warranted attention, and the crescendo of the mini-series, the hipster favourite Tro Bro Leon, was one of the races of the year so far.
Here's what happened…
Lewis Askey took a well-deserved victory from a late attack at Boucles de l’Aulne (8 May), to kick off the weekend on a positive note for Groupama-FDJ. Benoît Cosnefroy won the sprint from the bunch behind. It took me a full half an hour to click that it was his first pro win. The last time I saw Askey in person (not that I see many riders in person, given how few races I actually attend), he was walking sadly away from a fish and chip shop in Saltburn having been told ‘we’ve not got any fish.’ (I was sitting on a wall opposite said shop, eating fish and chips. Apparently I’d secured the last fish in Saltburn, and felt quite bad for depriving Askey, who’d rode brilliantly at nationals to place second in the road race. I’m sure this win has finally cleansed him of that bitter disappointment.
The following day though, momentum swung in favour of Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, with another one-two for the team at the Tour du Finistère (9 May) – though the winner was unexpected, in the shape of young multi-discipline rider Aubin Sparfel. Riding his first pro season with the team, it’s hardly surprising that this was the first pro victory for the 19-year-old, and with Paul Seixas already firing on all cylinders, Decathlon seem to be able to lay claim to two of the brightest young French talents in a nation that is desperately seeking its next superstars.
GP de Plumelec-Morbihan (10 May) was up next, the 3rd of a quadruple-header of Breton races and one that was ridden full-gas with plenty of attacking, despite the fact that it’s a race where a fairly large group usually makes it to the finish, before a final uphill sprint to the line separates the puncheurs from the rest.
Fresh from his return to racing in Romandie, Benoît Cosnefroy was first from the bunch after Lewis Askey in Boucles de l’Aulne two days prior, but in a race he’d won twice before, he well and truly proved that he was BACK with a storming push to the finish line ahead of Kévin Vauquelin and Clement Venturini from Arkéa-B&B Hotels. The puncheur extraordinaire is back, and with it, his team’s good fortune rolled on through the Breton weekend.
This final race report is extracted directly from my longer piece on Substack…
Tro Bro Léon (11 May) – the climax of the French Cup weekend tour of Brittany, the gravelliest of road races, with its series of rough farm tracks or ‘ribinou’ to contend with and a piglet for the best-placed Breton. One Breton riding the race for the first time was Valentin Madouas, who featured on the widely acclaimed race publicity poster for the 2024 edition, an honour which may have enticed him to participate, even if the prospect of a win on home soil didn’t. He joined a host of other debutants as the race attracted one of its strongest line-ups in recent years, with the likes of Matej Mohorič, Biniam Girmay, Alberto Bettiol and Arnaud Démare lining up in the hope of becoming successor to last year’s winner, Lotto’s Arnaud de Lie.
No amount of star turns could hold back the charge of the resurgent Decathlon-AG2R though, and in particular 23-year-old Bastien Tronchon.
Look, I’m not saying it was easy to follow this race. Or ride it, apparently. The weather was appalling, the dirt tracks churned up and the riders smattered with muck and barely recognisable. The camera crew were clearly having a nightmare, and we were treated to numerous placeholder views of the Breton coast – stunning, but not what we came for. When we did have coverage it was often the helicopter shot, and piecing together who was where along a narrow, winding course, was sketchy at best, with my understanding of the race regularly flawed. At one point I thought Madouas was leading, with Fred Wright on his wheel – two riders I’d be very excited to cheer to the finale – only to discover they were chasing on behind the lead group.
There were mechanicals aplenty. Tronchon himself had a flat tire, and later, away and gone or so it seemed, Vauquelin flatted, victory slipping from his grasp as quickly as he stormed into a leading position. Tronchon was a machine though. He even took a wrong turning into a car park at one point, while leading, only to turn himself round and head off back up the road, catching the two-man group he’d already left once. He was later joined by his teammate, Pierre Gautherat, and Uno-X Mobility’s Fredrik Dversnes, who had attacked, only for the intrepid Decathlon duo to chase him down. He then crashed and suddenly, another Decathlon one-two scenario presented itself. With Madouas and Anthony Turgis chasing but not making ground, it was simply a case of deciding who’s day it was. The chosen man was Tronchon – any other outcome would have been criminal, given how completely ON IT he had been all day.
(My notes app auto-corrected ‘Tronchon’ to ‘Truncheon’ – ironic as he really did give the competition a bit of a beating. Sorry, I’m always a sucker for a terrible sports pun having been indoctrinated by a tabloid-reading, sports-obsessed father growing up).
Third placed overall and the best-placed Breton, Valentin Madouas won a piglet called Léon – who is by all accounts, settling in well in his new home.
Some other races happened… that I sadly wasn’t able to pay such close attention to.
In the north of France the many days of Dunkirk began with the Classique Dunkerque, which was won by Pascal Ackermann (Israel-Premier Tech) – a sprinter long overdue a win. After that, the five stages of the 4 Jours de Dunkerque saw a range of riders taking victory, but the honours were divided between Great Britain and France. Axel Zingle took stage 1, in his first individual victory since joining Visma-Lease a Bike, before Lewis Askey continued his fine run of form with a win on stage 2 - despite unclipping at the finish - check out the memorable celebration picture below. Pierre Gautheret went one better than his second place at Tro Bro on stage 3, before it was a clean sweep for the Brits after that, Sam Watson (INEOS Grenadiers) winning stage 4 and Jake Stewart (Israel-Premier Tech) stage 5, while Watson wrapped up the overall classification.
The Tour of Hongrie (14-18 May) is an almost fully sprint-based race, and it was Danny van Poppel (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) taking centre stage not as lead-out but as lead man on with victory on stages 1 and 2. Martin López continued XDS Astana’s run of good fortune winning the queen stage – and the overall classification – before the sprinters returned on stages 4 and 5, with wins for Dylan Groenewegen (Team Jayco-AlUla) and Sebastian Molano (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) respectively.
And at the Rund um Köln (18 May) Matthew Brennan continued to be absolutely on fire, beating Biniam Girmay to take his 5th victory of the season.
And in France, Eline Jansen (VolkerWessels) won the women’s La Classique Morbihan (9 May), while Eleonora Gasparrini (UAE Team ADQ) won the GP de Plumelec-Morbihan (10 May).
Martina Fidanza (Team Visma-Lease a Bike) won the Trofee Maartyn Wynants (11 May), and April Tacey (Team Coop Repsol) won the ZLM Omloop der Kempen Ladies (17 May)
FINAL THOUGHT – BITESIZE TAKEAWAYS FROM THE GIRO
You thought I’d really get through this entire newsletter without saying something about the Giro? Oh ye of little faith. Of course you can read my extensive ramblings about the race over at the Substack, but here for your reading pleasure, is my top 3 mini-takeaways from La Corsa Rosa, stages 1-12.
MAGNIFICENT MADS – not content with winning three stages [four now - I wrote this on Friday morning!], spending five days in the maglia rosa and leading the maglia ciclamino competition, Mads Pedersen has been relentlessly ripping the race to shreds at every given opportunity on behalf of his teammates as well as for himself. He’s a force to be reckoned with on the flat, he is climbing better than a man of his stature deserves to be able to, and his work on several key stages including the decisive gravel stage (9) has significantly shaped the race. Simply put, free of the constraints of one-day racing against the titans of the discipline, Mads is king.
WHITE ROADS RULE – forget any arguments to the contrary – the Strade Bianche of Tuscany belong in the Giro d’Italia just as much as the high mountain passes of the Dolomites or the tricky city circuits of Naples. They are part of the fabric of the Italian road network, never mind its cycling heritage, and if proof were needed, just take a look at the entertainment they provided on stage 9. The race was reshaped in a popcorn-worthy dust-covered gladiatorial battle that will live long in the memory as the definition of the 2025 Giro.
UAE LEADERSHIP – for a number of years now, the leadership wrangles within UAE Team Emirates have both amused and exasperated cycling fans, as without Tadej Pogacar, we watch the team of super-domestiques jostle for position at the top of the pecking order. It’s such a running joke now, that’s it’s time we took a step back and actually considered the possibility that the team management DO know what they’re doing – despite all evidence to the contrary.
‘We will let the roads decide’ – or words to that effect, was the answer, when on the rest day press conference, UAE’s DSs were asked who the leader was – Isaac Del Toro, who was then (and still is now) wearing the maglia rosa, or the team’s supposedly designated pre-race leader and in-form rider Juan Ayuso.
Are they just trolling us? Are they trolling their own employees? Ayuso is clearly unsettled at UAE and looking ahead to a time when he will lead in the Tour de France. With Pogacar in the fold, that’s simply not an option. Therefore his leadership at the Giro should not have been in question. Yet even now, with Del Toro ahead of him, and Brandon McNulty and Adam Yates just a couple of minutes behind in 6th and 7th place, unless there’s an elaborate plan being cooked up behind the scenes, it’s difficult to see Ayuso as the out-and-out leader of the team. Del Toro seems determined to freelance his way to victory at the race, and the team management seem content with the chaos that’s ensuing around them – after all, they have the top two riders in the standings, and two more in the top ten, waiting in the wings. Maybe instead of questioning or deriding them, it’s time to accept that this is what they want – it’s what they paid for, when they signed so many team leaders. Not to corral them into domestique roles they didn’t sign up for – but to throw them into the lion’s den and see who comes out alive.
And finally –
How good is it to see Wout finally prevail?
Visma-Lease a Bike are really growing into this Giro
Bad luck for the French with Gaudu crashing and Bardet too – hoping for more from them in week 3
Amazing to see Diego Ulissi’s joy at taking the maglia rosa for the first time in his career, aged 35
Lorenzo Fortunato is having a storming race – Astana continue to cook
If it wasn’t for time trials, Giulio Ciccone could have won this thing
THE LAST WORD
And that’s all for now. I’m busy writing all kinds of pieces for the Substack, the website, the Domestique site launch and an exclusive feature on French racing for Cycling News, and I’ll bring you all of these next time I write.
In the meantime, as always, if you’d like to support the newsletter, you can buy me a coffee. I love writing this thing – it is a labour of love at times but it gives structure to my working weeks, and stubbornly insists I make sure I’m consistently staying up to date with all the goings-on in the world of pro cycling. Which gets tricky at this time of year – but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Until next time, ciao regazzi!
Cheers,
Katy