Giro d'Italia Giro d’Italia 2025: Post-Race Rating Poll

[Libertine Seguros]

Ok I kinda had it with that argument. So all those people that enjoyed the Giro just have a bad memory?
It might also be possible people thought the first two weeks were pretty entertaining. Sure there was no real GC action, but it's not all about the GC. I thought a lot of stages were fun to watch.
If you weren't entertained that's a perfectly valid opinion, but it's kind of disrespectful to dismiss everybody that did enjoy themselves as just having a bad memory.

No, it's just that it's the equivalent of a football match that's 0-0 until the 89th minute because both sides are afraid of losing, then suddenly turns into a frenetic battle when both teams realise they really don't fancy a penalty shoot-out and it's helter-skelter for extra time. It's not wrong to be entertained by it and have enjoyed it and come out of the game buzzing from the action as both teams went all out to win in the final half hour, but it's not wrong to point out that the first 89 minutes were ass.

 

[Red Rick]

2022 was hardly any better. 2012 is perhaps viewed worse because it came off the back of a goated 2010 and then 2011, which is a good template to look at for a GT that had a dominant winner (and obviously by that I'm meaning Contador rather than Scarponi) but was nevertheless somewhat well-received, but I honestly think 2012 is a worse race than 2023. 2023 at least featured a moderately satisfying conclusion, while 2012 got the meme champion it deserved.

To me it largely signals that GT quality isn't that much judged by how much actually happens but instead a lot of it's simply determined by preexisting expectations, narratives and storylines that unfold, and how the discussion.

2012 I think had very high expectations because we all those 3 extremely hard mountain stage designs. But the main narrative that sticks to it is that one of the weakest GT winners this century won it because a better rider kinda forgot to just finish him off. Nothing about that has much to do with the actual quality of the stages.

2022 IMO turned somewhat sour when it turned into Carapaz vs Hindley and they didn't really attack each other much. But we've seem similar patterns with different riders be treated very differently.

2023 everyone decided was the worst in history basically after stage 13, with GSB being taken out, the GC battle delivering a wet fart and Thibaut Pinot not saving that Giro by winning a stage.

2025 Meanwhile has only 2 good mountain stages, and coasts on elements that are basicallyy always praised or ignored depending on if people were satisfied by the result and the rationalize after the fact. Primarily it had a lot of mountain stages where something did happen from long range but it fizzled out immediately, namely on stages 11, 15 and 17. And then it had some good breakaway stages and fewer pure sprints, but I especailly can never get behind the latter as reduced sprints or slightly uphill sprints barely do anything different from flat sprints it's just slightly different names.

2025 being rated highly is very much driven by narrative, especially with Del Toro being treated as the new big thing, when really he just kind of took the lead by accident, and then mostly raced defensively outside of a few 1km attacks and bonus sprints until he decided he was tired of having the pink jersey.

 

[Valv.Piti]

2025 you actually had the feeling that the riders really raced hard. The route design led to those attacks not having a real chance to succeed on stages 11, 15 and 17, but those stages were still good stages despite the route and delivered much more than you expect still IMO. And then you had some genuinely really good stages.

2023 you had the opposite feeling - despite opportunities, you saw too many stages being raced extremely negative. I didn't even care once the last ITT rolled around after that stage to Tre Cime. What an atrocity. I just checked out and couldn't care less. Obviously didn't help that I dont care for Roglic or Thomas at all.

 

[Red Rick]

2025 you actually had the feeling that the riders really raced hard.

There were a few half assed long range attacks that were then followed by a lot of waiting around.

2025 had a lot of plot twists and drama, but much of that was without the race actually being raced by everyone, and instead it was favorites crashing and then exploding out the back at the slightest bit of pace.

And I don't deny that 2025 was a better Giro than 2023, but imo stages 7, 11, 15, 17 and 19 were all bad mountain stages and they're all getting glossed over.

 

[Gigs_98]

How is any of that contradictory to a 2011 TdF comparison?

The race sucked for the first half, the only action was caused by crashes, and then because it had a spectacular ending, in the immediate aftermath of the race everybody forgot all about how most of the GC was still based on the TTT times from stage 2 plus or minus some crashes all the way until the final week and started rating it 11/10 giving ASO the impetus to start the fad for shortening all the mountain stages (despite the best stage being a 200km stage with three HC mountains) and putting a sprint stage on the penultimate weekend, which they did for most of the 2010s.

Likewise, I think this was a race which was mostly pretty sucky (in many cases despite the riders' best attempts, which is a key difference from 2011) for two weeks, then we had a good final week with two fantastic stages (16 and 20) that people have fresh in their memory when they judge the race, so they're not judging the race as a whole but instead their fresh memories of the crazy finale, and overvaluing the whole three week picture as a result.

This is a long way from being a bad Grand Tour like the 2012 Giro was, but then my problem with the 2011 Tour was never about it being a bad Grand Tour, it was about the horrible pacing and the terrible racing in the first two weeks ending up with people treating a very dull three week race that evolved into the greatest Dauphiné Libéré ever as a bastion and shining example of what a Grand Tour should be. I raised the 2012 Giro as a reductio ad absurdum example of why an exciting and surprising conclusion does not in and of itself make a great race.

I think where our opinions strongly diverge is when it comes to how we perceived the stage 9 to stage 15 part of this Giro. Maybe the 2011 TdF was heavily influenced by crashes but those crashes didn't cause me to be glued to the television for two hours like in the gravel stage. Even stage 14 was extremely interesting to watch after the peloton had split. Moreover I think stages 11, 12 and 15 were pretty good on top of that.

I get it if you say you cannot appreciate "exciting" racing when the race was essentially decided in a lottery and involved injuries. But this still makes this Giro very different compared to the 2011 TdF imo. Nothing interesting happened in that race before they arrived in the Alps while a bunch of interesting stuff happened prior to the las week of this Giro, even though the origin of that stuff was often crash related. I went into stage 20 already thinking this had been a very good Giro, I really don't think my opinion here is just the result of a crazy finale.

 

[Gigs_98]

So I've now already made a couple of comments here and I think based on those you can already see that I liked this Giro quite a bit. The race until the gravel stage was a little boring, albeit not unusually boring for a first week. After that it was very good.

The narratives were fantastic with the cherry on top of Yates getting his Finestre redemption and I haven't seen racing this aggressive in a long time. The route meant that attacks from far out on stages 11, 12, 15 and 17 still didn't lead to the most incredible stages out there, but all of them were really entertaining and quite a bit better than expected. Combine that with 3 genuinely amazing stages with stages 9, 16 and 20 and I have to rate this as one of the best GTs of the last few years.

There is however one critique of the race that I absolutely do accept and I have to admit, when I rated the race 8/10 I was in a good mood, willing to ignore this point. After stage 14 I had a discussion how people would remember this Giro and the 2020 edition was brought up. I disregarded this because I thought people don't value that race very highly because the gc competitors were seen as a bit of a joke, something I did not think would be the case for this years Giro. Now tbf I still think Yates, Del Toro and Carapaz make a more formidable podium then TGH, Hindley and Kelderman did (especially at the time) but I will admit, after the abandonment of Roglic and Ayuso the 2020 comparison becomes a lot more accurate. And it's also not just those two, Landa, Hindley and Ciccone all crashed out while the races of Bernal and Tiberi were massively impacted by crashes. The race does lose a lot of it's shine if the riders racing for victory were simply the last ones standing.

All that being said I don't think there is one correct way to answer how this should impact ones opinion on a race. If all big names crash out of a GT but the race for the win between the 21st and 22nd best climber is the craziest thing you've ever seen, does that make the craziness of their battle less entertaining? Is entertainment even what we are rating? I think everyone will have to answer this for themselves and I don't even know how to answer it myself. But at the end I focussed more on all the attacking, the lead changes and plots of unexpected success, tragedy and redemption. And taking all of this to account I think this has been the best Giro since 2018.

 

[ashhutch1997]

People are overreacting about how bad the first 2 weeks were IMO.

 

[Gratemans]

No, it's just that it's the equivalent of a football match that's 0-0 until the 89th minute because both sides are afraid of losing, then suddenly turns into a frenetic battle when both teams realise they really don't fancy a penalty shoot-out and it's helter-skelter for extra time. It's not wrong to be entertained by it and have enjoyed it and come out of the game buzzing from the action as both teams went all out to win in the final half hour, but it's not wrong to point out that the first 89 minutes were ass.

It's not wrong that you personally found the first 89 minutes ass, that's your opinion and it's fine. But it seems to me you're only focussing on the GC then.
My point is: a lot of people seemed to have enjoyed this Giro, and that has nothing to do with recency bias or bad memories. There actually was some great racing going on in the first two weeks. Some people can find a stage entertaining even if there's no major GC differences being made.

 

[dazaau]

Why is half this thread taking about racing from a decade and a half ago 😅

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Why is half this thread taking about racing from a decade and a half ago 😅

Because for two out of three weeks we had to entertain ourselves

 

[Keldergoat]

No, it's just that it's the equivalent of a football match that's 0-0 until the 89th minute because both sides are afraid of losing, then suddenly turns into a frenetic battle when both teams realise they really don't fancy a penalty shoot-out and it's helter-skelter for extra time. It's not wrong to be entertained by it and have enjoyed it and come out of the game buzzing from the action as both teams went all out to win in the final half hour, but it's not wrong to point out that the first 89 minutes were ass.

Using an '89th minute' football analogy is so off the mark if already the second week of this Giro was full of excitement. Stage 10 and 11 were super entertaining with Carapaz showing balls and the ITT being full of surprises. The Asgreen stage was extremely fun to watch, although partly due to crashes, and Grappa and even Vicenza were compelling to watch due to Ineos lighting it on fire far from the finish.

If you then use a football analogy, the right one is that the first 30 minutes were a bit wait and see but after that both teams went for it (and even that is exaggerated since the first week gave us that absolute banger of a stage in Siena. Even Tagliacozzo I found more than decent for a first, shallow MTF. I think a lot of people here on the forum really disliked the stage designs (rightfully so) and find it hard to then jump to the surprising conclusion that it was a banger of a race.

 

[Red Rick]

All that being said I don't think there is one correct way to answer how this should impact ones opinion on a race. If all big names crash out of a GT but the race for the win between the 21st and 22nd best climber is the craziest thing you've ever seen, does that make the craziness of their battle less entertaining? Is entertainment even what we are rating? I think everyone will have to answer this for themselves and I don't even know how to answer it myself. But at the end I focussed more on all the attacking, the lead changes and plots of unexpected success, tragedy and redemption. And taking all of this to account I think this has been the best Giro since 2018.

Riders get treated differently for the same events on the road, so it's not exactly rocket science that the response to different riders doing the same things would be received differently.

And I don't say that to devalue the entertainment, but just that it's subjective. Even when it's the 5th, 6th, and 15th favorite battling it out in the end, who it is still kind of matters. Alaphilippe was a wild story despite it being somewhat obvious he was gonna implode and that he'd never do that again. At the same time the 2012 Giro would be treated slightly differently if a more popular rider had taken that win in a similar fashion.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Using an '89th minute' football analogy is so off the mark if already the second week of this Giro was full of excitement. Stage 10 and 11 were super entertaining with Carapaz showing balls and the ITT being full of surprises. The Asgreen stage was extremely fun to watch, although partly due to crashes, and Grappa and even Vicenza were compelling to watch due to Ineos lighting it on fire far from the finish.

If you then use a football analogy, the right one is that the first 30 minutes were a bit wait and see but after that both teams went for it (and even that is exaggerated since the first week gave us that absolute banger of a stage in Siena. Even Tagliacozzo I found more than decent for a first, shallow MTF. I think a lot of people here on the forum really disliked the stage designs (rightfully so) and find it hard to then jump to the surprising conclusion that it was a banger of a race.

Siena was a good stage.

But that doesn't mean that the race after that was all good and so "only" the first half hour of our figurative football match was dull because the action started at the 30 minute mark, otherwise it would suggest that any race with a good stage 1 is a great race throughout, and something like the 2014 Tour with a really good second stage would be much more revered than it is in actuality.

I thought the organisers deserved a 1 or 2 out of 10 for how they did their best to destroy all action or allow situations that would make crashes the focal point of the action in the eternal aim of an exciting finale on the last day (I sometimes feel like poor audience figures for sprint stages are the only thing that stops organisers just having 19 flat stages then an MTF on stage 20 so they can guarantee a close finish), and the riders deserved an 8 or 9 out of 10 for how they tried to maximise the few opportunities the organisers gave them and actively make the race.

Balanced out, that gives a flat 5/10 and that's how I feel about the race.

 

[ashhutch1997]

And I don't deny that 2025 was a better Giro than 2023, but imo stages 7, 11, 15, 17 and 19 were all bad mountain stages and they're all getting glossed ovover.

The reason why they were 'bad mountain stages' was because of the poor stage design, and people on here appreciate that fact that the riders were super aggressive despite the limited opportunities. And the fact we've been desperate for a good Giro after 3 awful editions.
Stage 7 - was always going to be a reduced uphill sprint.
Stage 11 - San Pellagrino in Alpe was over 100k from the finish, in the second week, and still Egan Bernal and Ineos attacked and caused splits.
Stage 15 - riders attacked on Grappa and Dori, but how is anyone going to make a difference on a 5% tempo grinder?
Stage 17 - action and attacks on the Btec Mortirolo, too far from the finish to great major gaps.
Stage 19 - again another tempo grinder, the Col de Joux is perfect for a mountain train. Plus another 5% climb to the finish.
So all in all, despite the horrible route, these mountain stage were raced hard. Put this years riders in the 2023 route and you'd get a very good race. I like many people was waking up excited to watch the big mountain stages, and probably haven't felt that in the Giro since 2018.

 

[Red Rick]

The reason why they were 'bad mountain stages' was because of the poor stage design, and people on here appreciate that fact that the riders were super aggressive despite the limited opportunities. And the fact we've been despite for a good Giro after 3 awful editions.
Stage 7 - was always going to be a reduced uphill sprint.
Stage 11 - San Pellagrino in Alpe was over 100k from the finish, in the second week, and still Egan Bernal and Ineos attacked and caused splits.
Stage 15 - riders attacked on Grappa and Dori, but how is anyone going to make a difference on a 5% tempo grinder?
Stage 17 - action and attacks on the Btec Mortirolo, too far from the finish to great major gaps.
Stage 19 - again another tempo grinder, the Col de Joux is perfect for a mountain train. Plus another 5% climb to the finish.
So all in all, despite the horrible route, these mountain stage were raced hard. Put this years riders in the 2023 route and you'd get a very good race.

I appreciate the riders try something, but I don't think think it's automatically a good stage when a GC rider tries something for 5 minutes that obviously goes nowhere before 2 more hours of waiting. I think that just reinforces how poor the route actually is.

 

[OlavEH]

7/10. Best giro in several years. Since 2019 perhaps. Three really good GC stages, and some pretty good breakway stages. But there was just too little GC action on too few stages to rate it any better than 7.

 

[jmdirt]

0. First grand tour in 14 years without easy way to view. No legal access left since the end of GCN. Tiz froze. VPN wouldn't work with Italian races
Managed to watch some stages live,
the boring ones from the 2nd week.

Try living in the USA, coverage is always carap (sometimes if you spend enough its better)!

YouTube has a lot of hours of coverage.

 

[jmdirt]

Greatly disagree with the first point. I don't understand someone being a 'cycling fan' and not finding something to enjoy in this Giro, but 'fully enjoying' suggests that it was 2010/2015 level, and frankly it just wasn't even remotely on that level; it had suspense and a dramatic conclusion, but while this was a vastly superior edition to 2012, I would point out that that alone does not absolve the previous issues; if Hesjedal and Purito had stared each other down until they dropped enough time for Thomas de Gendt to win the Giro, it may have been dramatic, but it still wouldn't have made that Giro good.

LS, you have forced me to stuff the needle into the vinyl:

Live in the now (who cares about 2024, let alone 2012), this was the best GdI this year and the best GT of the year.

 

[Skalman]

3/10 (Without Yates majestic ride it would have a 2/10) Giro continues to disappoint, it was almost as bad as when Hindley won it. It only had 2,5 fun stages the rest was a very big yawn. Crashes and strange abandons didn't help this version.
The excitement was constructed and not due to actual racing but to the lackluster route.
This Giro was so back heavy that the riders where not separated by much which creates some tension and excitement but is it really like this how we want the Grand Tour´s to look like? is it?

Well now everyone just remembers the final week and singing praise over the Giro, But what about the incredible boredom and anti racing that took place the first 2 weeks ( Minus the very exciting Strade stage).

Add to that you have race leader that in the penultimate stage raises his hands and goes " No mas" , Nah that i never learn, so bad.

 

[ashhutch1997]

I appreciate the riders try something, but I don't think think it's automatically a good stage when a GC rider tries something for 5 minutes that obviously goes nowhere before 2 more hours of waiting. I think that just reinforces how poor the route actually is.

Well I think we've all bashed this years route on here, ever since the presentation.

 

[Hugh Januss]

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   gregrowlerson​

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[Sciatic]

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   gregrowlerson​

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What is this?

 

[zigzag wanderer]

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   gregrowlerson​

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I think this needs its own thread - Mental or Random Cyclingnews Forum Statistics

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Reactions to my post in this thread, nothing unusual, except check the "Points" for the three posters.

This is not unusual at all though, as it's the score for every poster who joined between 2 and 7 years ago and has amassed at least 10000 posts and 2500 likes, as well as every poster who joined more than 7 years ago and is somewhere between 5000 and 10000 posts and also at 2500 likes. That's a looot of posters.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Between a 6 and a 7, the amount of crashes ruining the chances of many gc contenders (Roglic, Landa, Hindley, Ciccone and also Tiberi) took away some of the excitement, but the riders actually did what they could with the meh route that Vegni gave them. The race actually got better TV ratings that last year's in Italy and apparently also the best ratings in 10 years on German Eurosport, showing that the Pogacar isn't that big of a draw as cycling media wants us to believe...