Giro d'Italia 2025 Giro d'Italia Women, July 6-13

[SafeBet]

Monte Nerone is such a nice climb.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Ostolaza and van Anrooij in the counter-move trying to ride across to Geurts. Ostolaza looks like she's after the QOM, she has taken the GPM lead on the road, but you would think Gigante will earn a reasonable amount from the MTF so Ostolaza will want the duo to catch Geurts before the summit of La Forchetta if she's serious about the bid, as 15 points are available there, which would mean that if the three fugitives are still out front then, she can gain an extra 13 points on Gigante even if the latter rolls over ahead of the rest of the péloton for 4th, meaning Gigante would have to win the MTF and Ostolaza not score - that would put both of them dead level on points but Gigante would hold the tie break for having taken the cat.1s.

We're still some way from that being definitive, but the gap has come down by 20" while the péloton is letting them get further away in the last few minutes. There are a bunch of cat.3 and 4 climbs tomorrow which you'd suspect Ostolaza might try and nab some points in if Gigante is a threat, whereas Gigante, if she does well enough on Monte Nerone to still be battling the QOM, will be too dangerous in GC to be let go, so the circumstances would favour the Basque if they capture Geurts before the summit.

If they don't, then Ostolaza would sacrifice 8 points, meaning all of the above would still apply should Gigante finish 2nd on Monte Nerone and Ostolaza not score; if Gigante wins then obviously she holds the cards and Ostolaza would need to go probably into a break in the Imola stage.

 

[Izzyeviel]

I have no idea what happened to Fleur Moors, but she has a lot of metal work in her arm.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

So this makes for an interesting play for Trek now, as van Anrooij is in the virtual maglia rosa by a little over a minute. It's really not a massive lead but it's going to be interesting how they decide to play this one now with regards to Longo Borghini - presumably the play for the time being is to let her hang out there and make Movistar burn matches to keep the gap competitive or ask SD Worx or AG to join in to preserve current strong GC roles, but then if they leave van Anrooij hanging out there, she's also a carrot for ELB to bridge across to.

Lorena Wiebes on actual, honest to God domestique duty, it's like going back in time a decade to when the Giro was the one time a year Lizzie Deignan would become a well-behaved, loyal and trusted domestique for a week.

Edit: I'm a total moron, was travelling back in time and behaving like ELB was still on Trek.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

AG are really working hard to break this apart on the uncategorised climb, they've somehow dropped Juliette Labous who is having a very rough race relative to expectations. In other "somehow" news, Sarah Gigante has finally moved up to a good low-risk position in the péloton after spending most of the race utilising sub-Rooijakkers positional skills.

 

[awavey]

I have no idea what happened to Fleur Moors, but she has a lot of metal work in her arm.

broken radius from the crash at the roundabout in the final bit of the stage the other day, the metal work is to stabilise the fracture

 

[awavey]

have to admit paying no attention to the racing, just admiring the scenery

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Persico and ELB attack on the descent and have Lippert to deadweight them, but it's a crucial potential move for the GC before the final climb. Obviously Movistar have zero intention of letting this go, but might want to let ELB work herself a bit before the start of the climb.

Edit: Great job by Persico, pulled her into virtual maglia rosa, and then when she handed over, Lippert stops very quickly and pulls back to the front for Reusserm and they're building a train with the expected numbers, Patiño on the front, with Lippert and Meijering to keep on pulling while ELB solos. It is looking good for Elisa for the time being.

The Movistar train isn't really dropping many, Meijering takes it up as it seems Patiño is done. Rooijakkers is on the back as usual, but how much of that is that she is suffering after yesterday's exploits and how much of it is that she just rides like that is hard to tell.

 

[ice&fire]

Movistar train is useless. Gap to ELB has been locked at ~50s for a few minutes now

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Movistar train is useless. Gap to ELB has been locked at ~50s for a few minutes now

They're not dropping many riders at all. Either Reusser isn't feeling great and this is pretty much what she has so they're tapping out that tempo, or they need to step the pace up and sacrifice a bit sooner leaving it to Reusser sooner.

And as I type that Lippert pulls about 10 seconds back and then swings off and seeing it go back up again, so seems like it may be the latter.

Edit: Meijering is tailing a fair few riders off now, but they're still not making inroads into ELB. And there's still a fair few GC-relevant riders there who look pretty comfortable.

And now Meijering is done. She lost a bit of time toward the end there when she was running on empty, there were a few riders able to get up alongside Reusser, and she's also sat in the middle of the group there, so I do wonder if Reusser just isn't feeling great today so Movistar were pacing it at her level.

 

[Cycling111]

Reusser doesn't look well

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Definitely, think Movistar's train was more about tapping out a tempo that Reusser was happy with now, having seen the outcome after she was left alone. Goaty goats coming to the fore now with turbo diesels and all-rounders like Anna VDB and Reusser being put to the sword by the likes of Gigante and seeing the likes of Rooijakkers coming to the front behind as well.

Reusser doesn't look well

 

[Cycling111]

Gigante seems the strongest in the Giro but has lost the race due to his positioning and descent problems.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Sarah Gigante is kinda like 2008-9 era Emma Pooley, which is great. She's small, she's a brilliant climber, she's actually a pretty good time triallist (winning national titles back in her teens), but she has so many serious deficits in terms of technical aspects of the sport that hold her back - descending, bunch placement, bike handling and so on - just as how Pooley lost out on a Giro win and a number of Classics in similar fashion in her time.

The péloton is deeper than it was in Pooley's day which means the kind of gaps she can make in her specialism are less than they were back then, but on the flip side there's more of the calendar suitable for her to gain from than there was for Emma at that point in her career too.

Kinda silly that she will not be the QOM after this, due to there only being 5 points' difference between cat.2 and cat.1 summits, when the two cat.2s earlier were very generous. Her performance even here is a little hamstrung by her technique, certainly doesn't seem optimally efficient and you'd think she possibly has room for more incremental improvements in her climbing if she can sort out some of the wasted movement as well. She's not Liane "operating a jackhammer while riding" Lippert or anything, but she definitely isn't the most aesthetic climber out there.

 

[SafeBet]

Gigante is so much better than anyone else uphill she could well be on the podium tonight. Tomorrow might be a problem though.

 

[JR1012]

Finally they stopped working and now Reusser have to pull.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Reusser's actually pulling some time back on ELB as she tires towards the summit but it is far too little too late.

Edit: yup, about 30" at the end between Longo Borghini and Reusser, but ELB also gets the 6 bonus seconds for second.

 

[JR1012]

Well done ELB and UAD.

 

[yaco]

Its a pity that Gigante lost 1m and 42s on that non-existent days of echeleons. Reminds me when and AVV and her team lost the Giro on a similar stage because they went to sleep.

 

[JosefK]

What a great queen stage, today! Gigante was gigantic! Longo Borghini was courageous and tough, taking a risk and having it pay off. Reusser gave all she had, just coming up short in her efforts to stay in pink. On a side note, Sarah Gigante's body type reminds me of Annemiek van Vleuten's. Sarah's just 24 and will likely continue to improve. If her health stays intact she could be a real GC threat in stage races with mountain days.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Since when can Urska climb like this?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Since when can Urska climb like this?

She's got three top 10s at the Tour de Suisse and just came 5th in this year's edition, and was 4th in the Giro dell'Emilia last year. This is above her usual kind of level, but we've also had many a comment about the somewhat perplexing tactical or deployment plans of the Jayco team, who haven't really covered themselves in glory when it comes to how they've managed and supported their grimpeuses in recent years, whereas AG seem to be doing a good job at the moment with that, getting the most out of a lot of their riders and helping somewhat wayward or potentially lost talents get back on track as we're seeing most clearly with Gigante here.

Obviously though, the fact that there's a lot of major GC rider absences at this year's Giro also helps her performance stand out. Obviously ELB is a world class rider, and the likes of Reusser and post-retirement AVDB are hardly scrubs, but it is worth noting that it's AVDB after some years off the bike, and Reusser's climbing earlier in the season has been above her historical level, so this may be a matter of some fatigue creeping in after doing the Vuelta, Burgos and Suisse before this, while Kopecky has been hurt (and didn't seem to have form beforehand) and Labous is sick which has also impacted the depth of the field in the GC here.

We also have to factor in the missing riders - while not all are likely to have outperformed Žigart here, and as mentioned with the likes of Labous, crashes, illness and injury can hit anybody, there are a lot of climbers missing here, from the huge names like Vollering and Niewiadoma to the secondary contenders like Mavi García and Neve Bradbury (at opposite ends of their respective careers of course). You can only beat who's in front of you, and she's beating some very strong names here, but it isn't quite as outlying as you may initially think, imo.

 

[Izzyeviel]

Since when can Urska climb like this?

since the tour de france femme avec zwift

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Gigante's collected a couple of points on the lesser summits to get the QOM back in her grasp. TBH it is only fair and right, the difference between points for cat.1 and cat.2 is too small for the difference in difficulty between the climbs granted those statuses in the race, and I don't think anybody could make the argument from watching the race that Gigante hasn't been the best climber in it.

There are now too many people up the road for Ostolaza to acquire any more points without working very hard to get across from the péloton, mathematically she can still do it, but there's not any chance to take it from remainder points behind the break either. And from out of nowhere we have a Mikayla Harvey sighting!

 

[awavey]

god its so frustrating listening to this commentary which is just reading out previous riders results in a big list, tell us whats going on in this race !!!