Giro d'Italia Giro d'Italia 2025 Stage 10: Lucca – Pisa (Time Trial)

Page 27 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
My take–the weather is the weather, but it's an opinion how much it affected each rider. It's hard to say who was affected more/less, how that played out in each split, etc. Hard to quantify, therefore, opinion.
While it might be difficult to determine how much the weather affects each rider (mentally and/or physically), its pretty easy to determine that water on the road reduces the coefficient of friction. It is quantifiable, but it isn't necessary to quantify it to know that there is an effect, only to know the exact amount.
 
Yeah, but he stopped Ski jumping because of a bad crash. Overall you're right about Ski Jumpers, my little cousine did it for a short time and the guy had no fear, you could tell him to jump from the slide or a tree and he did it.
That's actually a myth IIRC. He stopped ski jumping because he realized he wasn't gonna make it to absolute world best level, and he he started cycling because he had gotten into it during his rehab from that crash.
 
Judging by the T1 time it's pretty likely Tarling went off on the assumption he had normal fresh legs and he paid for it badly.

Honestly, with the quality of the rest of the field and the incoming weather, it's a pretty bad mistake to go and blow yourself up.
Honestly, I though the wind changed after Hoole road, as the three best time in T2 are all of people who road early and WVA and Plapp who were on the road about at the same time as Tarling lost a surprising amount of time there. That said, Tarling was also slower than Vine, Ayuso and Cattaneo who rode after him, so probably not a stellar performance. Maybe a bit of both factor.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Red Rick
I always dislike when TTs are affected by the weather this but good win for Hoole nonetheless, another one for Lidl-Trek.

As for GC, great performances from Roglič and Simon Yates. Ayuso also did avery good TT but was a bit more affected by the rain and Del Toro was a bit worse than expected. Too bad Bernal crashed.
 
This isn't really Giro related, but it's come from my renewed love of Egan Bernal. Does anyone know if he's likely to ride the Tour? I know it wouldn't be as leader, but I wonder if he might go as a mountain domestique for Rodriguez? If so I shall be buying myself a Colombian flag and trying to find a reproduction of that national champs jersey. Fully signed up member of the Bernal fan club here.
Bernal has two of the three grand tours. The Vuelta is his true target this year, so no tour. You just need to hope Pog finds something else to focus on at the end of the year!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cookster15
Congratulations to Daan Hoole for winning the ITT.

Weather did end up affecting the results, still somehow "specialists" and "GC riders" had rather similar conditions on the road. Rogla was a bit more reserved, especially cornering, still finished the strongest among main GC rivals. The main battle in my eye today was in between Ayuso and del Toro for the pink. Ayuso really wanted to take the pink and blew a bit in the last sector, del Toro succeeding in keeping the pink. Too bad riders like Bernal had issues with crashing on the plus side it seems Simon Yates means business.
 
You claimed three times (and boasted of the fact that you said it three times) that UAE had not tweaked Del Toro's bike to get the best performance from it. I asked whether you knew that, or were simply repeating your guesswork.

I'll answer your question: no point, just a question.

Will you answer mine?
There was no boasting in anything I wrote. If you think so, you're wrong.

Before the season even started, it was already decided that Ayuso would take a step forward and headline a grand tour so UAE worked on his TT setup, fine-tuned it, trained extensively on it, wind-tunnel etc so that he would be fully prepared to win a GT, something they never did with Toro to that extent because they never planned for him to take a GC role this season. This is not a knock on Toro.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Cycling111
Watching del Toro TT i feel that he has some room left to improve in almost all aspects of it. From this point of view i doubt anybody thought del Toro will be in a position he is now and hence likely he got close to zero effort invested in improving his TT. Said that, will they now tell him directly, you need to support Ayuso and Yates, that is on why you are here for? I have my doubts the team will do any of that. So ultimately Ayuso will need to beat him on the road in one of the following stages, for del Toro to again becoming a support rider. Due to wearing leaders jersey now del Toro is more or less out of any tactical combinations. Here they can still try something with Yates.
 
An upnote preview of what's still to come:

So we've only got 2:30 between the entire top 10 going into week 3. Well that's surely a good thing.
While admittedly the next week should be quite tame regarding GC (I'm not expecting any action in that department tomorrow), at least it's not a week long sprintfest. There's a nice stage for the break, a sprint which I welcome because well, it's just the one. Then a nice puncheur stage into Vicenza (followed by ok, something pretty meh) and then we're already rolling into the final week with mountains galore!

So.. Carapaz? Week 3 Arensman? Geesus? Suddenly a wild Yates seems to have appeared as well.. And I'm getting some real Nibali vibes from the other one (eg. showing f all in prep races only to peak when it matters), and if not at least UAE drama: Del Toro vs Ayuso. Can Poole or Bardet pull a stunt? And of course Roglic will be cruising along. Hitting some random obstacles and/or pavement here and there of course, but I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if he ends up in pink. Then there's Tiberi and Ciccone. An Italian in pink in Rome? I would like that. (Preferrably Giulio for obvious reasons, but what's the chance)

So much to look forward to. Andiamo!
 
That's actually a myth IIRC. He stopped ski jumping because he realized he wasn't gonna make it to absolute world best level, and he he started cycling because he had gotten into it during his rehab from that crash.
You are right. Ski fall in Planica was in 2007 and he continue with ski jumping until early winter of 2011 (last official result). In meantime he got more and more involved with cycling first after the 2007 crash and then also during rehabilition of knee ligaments in 2011 so he stopped jumping in 2012 and decided to go all in into cycling.

His father also shared interesting information that his first sport love was football. So he switched from football to ski jumping to cycling.
 
You are right. Ski fall in Planica was in 2007 and he continue with ski jumping until early winter of 2011 (last official result). In meantime he got more and more involved with cycling first after the 2007 crash and then also during rehabilition of knee ligaments in 2011 so he stopped jumping in 2012 and decided to go all in into cycling.

His father also shared interesting information that his first sport love was football. So he switched from football to ski jumping to cycling.
So both Evenepoel and Roglic first learned to ROFL on a football pitch.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Miha81
And the part about Rog that often gets overlooked when people talk about his late start in cycling is the fact he'd been an athlete since he was a little kid. So even though he didn't go through youth cycling clubs or anything, he still had the mentality and psychological foundation of a top athlete and competitor.

Aka the man knows how to be a pro-athlete, how to live like a pro-athlete and how to deal with success or setbacks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: acm
And the part about Rog that often gets overlooked when people talk about his late start in cycling is the fact he'd been an athlete since he was a little kid. So even though he didn't go through youth cycling clubs or anything, he still had the mentality and psychological foundation of a top athlete and competitor.

Aka the man knows how to be a pro-athlete, how to live like a pro-athlete and how to deal with success or setbacks.
Pretty sure doing multiple sports as a kid is generally beneficial, and elite tier athletes are more likely to have played more different sports as a kid than sub elite tier athletes.

I don't know if that's selection bias in that if you play 3 different sports as a kid you're just more likely to discover your greatest talent, but I've always thought it makes a lot of sense because you develop more skills really early in your career.
 
And the part about Rog that often gets overlooked when people talk about his late start in cycling is the fact he'd been an athlete since he was a little kid. So even though he didn't go through youth cycling clubs or anything, he still had the mentality and psychological foundation of a top athlete and competitor.

Aka the man knows how to be a pro-athlete, how to live like a pro-athlete and how to deal with success or setbacks.

Also as as ski jumper he always had to control his weight very well. Comes in handy.
 
Yeah, but he stopped Ski jumping because of a bad crash. Overall you're right about Ski Jumpers, my little cousine did it for a short time and the guy had no fear, you could tell him to jump from the slide or a tree and he did it.
I had to do some googling because of complete unfamiliarity with Rogla's ski jumping career and, according to this rather lengthy but informative article, Rogla actually continued ski jumping for a while after that nasty Planica crash but just wasn't progressing. So that's when he made the jump to cycling.

“I did not have the respect or fear [for Planica] that day,” Roglič said, years later. “At that time, I thought I could do everything, jump more than 200m–you learn that you need the respect.”
But something changed that day. While Roglič would continue to train and compete for four more seasons, his progression stopped. Others moved up the pecking order, and he was overlooked for Olympic Games selection. In many ways, his ski jumping career ended that day on Planica, and a future in cycling that he could not yet see lay ahead was born.


And a clip of the infamous crash itself... unless he completely falls off a mountain somewhere every crash of his in cycling pales in comparison to this. :eek: (His coach also mentions Rogla trained very hard for several years after the crash but just wasn't getting anywhere.)

https://www.facebook.com/Eurosport/...ping-enough-so-crashed-big/10157624219559745/
 
Last edited: