Giro d'Italia Giro d'Italia 2025 stage 20: Verrès – Sestrière, 205 km

[Libertine Seguros]

Brian Holm predicting UAE and EF will be arch enemies for the rest of their existence

That's kind of like the time the time Bret Hart declared El Dandy to be his biggest rival for the world title.

 

[kingjr]

As a van der Poel fan, I've never cheered harder for van Aert than in the past 60 minutes... strange feeling, but a welcome one

 

[dazaau]

I honestly thought carapaz would crack del toro on this climb. Impressed del Toro did not. Highly unimpressed that he let decent tactics go to far and bet the house on carapaz caring about second vs third. Simon Yates I did not have as the likely outcome.

It is a beautiful story for Yates.

 

[dobrien]

Disagree. The drama up the Finestre was excellent, and then throwing toys out the pram by UAE was very very funny.

Double disagree!! Seeing flat out racing, Del Toro and Carapaz working together to either bring him back or blow trying, would have been vastly better than this. I can find no humor in it; it's not a dénouement worthy of the stage imho.

 

[Rackham]

That was truly awesome stuff. I'm very happy for Simon Yates. It shows happy ends are still a thing in cycling (after his 2018 Giro).

And the absolute cataclysmic error from EF and UAE today was allowing mister Wout van Aert himself into the breakaway with a ten minute lead going into Finestre, like it was nothing.

I mean come on. Hilarious stuff.

 

[Escarabajo]

I think I'm applying to become UAE tactical consultant

Can you think of a worst blunder than this?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

He did a big effort for Del Toro‘s sprint in the final k, what a rider

Brandon McNulty is Schrödinger's domestique.

 

[kingjr]

Like this is fairly obviously not true lol. They had no reason to let Yates go but they did because IDT only wanted to close Carapaz. Then they almost closed 45+ on Yates but IDT still did nothing in that so Carapaz sat back off and tried to let the gap go big enough that IDT might do something. Then he still did nothing and that was that.

IDT raced Carapaz, Carapaz raced IDT, and Yates won because he had good legs, a team plan and fortune on his side.

I took the time pretty regularly on the climb, when did they take back 45+ seconds? I think with 3 km to go the gap was 1:45, then with 2 to go it was 1:35 and at the top it was 1:40 again, something like that...

 

[Rechtschreibfehler]

Yates was hanging a few seconds in front of them for quite a while before they started playing games with each other. Then Gee started catching and riding past them as Carapaz kept trying to get del Toro to ride so that he could attack him. If they ride together, or if Carapaz is happier to ride to tempo and worry about breaking del Toro later rather than getting impatient, then that gap doesn't open up as rapidly as it did.

Only slight disagreement I have, but I'd have to watch this passage again, is that I think that Carapaz tried a few times to bridge, probably expecting to catch Yates and maybe dropping del Toro, so he might have been a bit tired rather than just playing games. Would have been the better strategy to ride a consistent chase, but I think that's easy to know in hindsight but also would have been against Carapaz style of racing, so I don't know if there's much room really to blame him. I think del Toro needs to understand he situation and do something. Because Carapaz did try to react to Yates and pulled most of the time, it just didn't work at all. So I am not convinced at all here that they had a realistic chance to catch Yates on the climb today. Whatever happened after the climb is another story, but after del Toro didn't do *** on the climb, I can't blame Carapaz for not being his work horse.

 

[dgodave]

Fantastic. Personal effort, teamwork, bold and canny too.

I'm going riding.....

 

[elguapo]

No one to be blamed but the whole UAE coaching staff in this Giro. Zero battle plan.

 

[AnotherArmChair]

I am glad Yates won but the strongest climber was Carapaz the whole Giro

I feel for him as he chances are few

He wont forget this easily ...and he wont be very welcome in Mexico any time soon

 

[iBanesto]

Where is Mcnulty, WAS MCNULTY IN THE GROUP

 

[Rou]

This was by far the worst ending to a Grand Tour I can remember. A rider giving up like this was just pathetic.

 

[Boehmand]

That celebration with the Bora rider was strange imo

Training mates

 

[Tim Cahill]

+1, Final GC

9

-

MCNULTY Brandon

UAE Team Emirates - XRG

13:36

I have never seen a performance like it in my life

 

[Fantastico]

I took the time pretty regularly on the climb, when did they take back 45+ seconds? I think with 3 km to go the gap was 1:45, then with 2 to go it was 1:35 and at the top it was 1:40 again, something like that...

Not 45+, but in the beginning Yates quickly had a gap of about 20-25 seconds, and they reduced it to maybe 10 seconds quite quickly. I am pretty sure they could've caught him at that point if not starting playing games again.

 

[iBanesto]

General classification after stage 20 and time won or lost in the classification.

Rnk.	+/-	Rider	Team	Time	Time won/lost
1	▲2	YATES Simon	TVL	79:18:42	▲1:21
2	▼1	DEL TORO Isaac	UAD	3:56	▼3:56
3	▼1	CARAPAZ Richard	EFE	4:43	▼4:00
4	-	GEE Derek	IPT	6:23	▼3:56
5	-	CARUSO Damiano	TBV	7:32	▼3:56
6	▲1	PELLIZZARI Giulio	RBH	9:28	▼3:56
7	▼1	BERNAL Egan	IGD	12:42	▼7:29
8	-	RUBIO Einer	MOV	13:05	▼6:26
9	▲1	MCNULTY Brandon	UAD	13:36	▼4:03
10	▼1	STORER Michael	TUD	14:27	▼5:16

 

[Krzysztof_O]

What an epic! Congrats to Yates on an amazing ride. He dropped a watt bomb on Finestre. Del Toro focused on Carapaz and they were losing time quickly. Is there a more epic GT climb than Finestre? I don't thinks so. Between climbs, behind the Mighty Wout (great job), Yates gained further 3 minutes in like 10 km! It was clear to me that Del Toro simply gave up at some point and decided to focus on top3 spot (instead of exploding and getting out of top3).

 

[Brullnux]

Like this is fairly obviously not true lol. They had no reason to let Yates go when they did, but they chose to because IDT only wanted to close Carapaz. Then they almost closed 45+ on Yates but IDT still did nothing in that so Carapaz sat back off and tried to let the gap go big enough that IDT might do something. Then he still did nothing and that was that.

IDT raced Carapaz, Carapaz raced IDT, and Yates won because he had good legs, a team plan and fortune on his side.

All of this is true, but I think that massive acceleration by Carapaz to almost close in on Yates gassed them both a bit. Even when Carapaz and Del Toro did ride (not for that long, but they did in parts) the gap either stayed steady or stretched out.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Can you think of a worst blunder than this?

2024 Tour de France Femmes for sure. Worst I've ever seen. Crash your own team leader out while she's supposed to be leading out a sprint, then let the sprinter - who crashed her out - ride off saying "I saw something yellow on the floor" for the glory of 8th place in the stage while abandoning the maillot jaune, then have the only rider who drops back to her contribute to the leadout first so she's toasted by the time the maillot jaune catches her... then offer zero support in the mountains and lose the GC by four seconds.

 

[Boehmand]

That's kind of like the time the time Bret Hart declared El Dandy to be his biggest rival for the world title.

Is that a wrestling reference?

It was never my thing but the name Bret Hart rings a bell.

 

[kingjr]

Not 45+, but in the beginning Yates quickly had a gap of about 20-25 seconds, and they reduced it to maybe 10 seconds quite quickly.

Yeah with a big effort, not so easy sustaining that. Yates was just the strongest climber today.

 

[Eclipse]

All of this is true, but I think that massive acceleration by Carapaz to almost close in on Yates gassed them both a bit. Even when Carapaz and Del Toro did ride (not for that long, but they did in parts) the gap either stayed steady or stretched out.

It definitely gassed them, stop start is always more exerting than tempo.

But again neither needed to let Yates ride off there in the first place but they were racing each other.

If Yates isn't third he doesn't just ride them off the wheels

 

[Rechtschreibfehler]

"He's a strong rider but not very intellegent." That's what Carapaz said about del Toro?