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

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Great win by Harper. Tremendous turnaround by Yates after the past few stages. Couldn't have worked out any better with WVA up the road. His lead doubled in no time after WVA took over the pacing. Yates ride will be a huge motivator for Visma going into the Tour. Bizarre rides by Carapaz and Del Toro, neither was prepared to assist the other in winning so they accepted losing. Maybe the weakest defense of a pink jersey I have seen for a long time, not that I mind seeing UAE lose a grand tour but Del Toro went out with a whimper. Seeing him move to the back of the chase group with quite a way to go was just weird.
 
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.
They got even closer than that. I think they got to 7 seconds and were just in touching distance on a switchback. If they kept the pressure on and latched back on, the entire stage might have changed.
 
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.
I think we should disqualify that as a blunder because her team were actively trying to make her lose rather than just be incompetent
 
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.
Well Carapaz did nearly blow entirely near the end of the Finestre riding his tail off to drop del Toro and catch Yates. When he clearly was doing neither, and nearly took himself out, that's when he just sat on del Toro's wheel. So you saw flat out racing from one of the two until he had nothing left. It is just that happened before the final climb
 
Carapaz couldn't drop Toro, how can he win again?
He couldn’t drop him on the Fenestre, but if they’d kept Yates within 10-20s and close enough to bridge then other options come into play.

I think especially given how fresh Del Toro seemed getting across the line that MOST of the blame probably falls to UAE, but to give Carapaz a pass on it is letting him off easy. IMHO.