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

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Sep 1, 2023
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If they’d worked together enough to keep Yates within a minute or so, that point might be valid, but they’ve both actively thrown it.

Carapaz’s Giro win is 6 years ago now. His team haven’t won a GT since 2012; this was the biggest chance they’ll get for a long time to come. There’s no way he can be absolved of blame for this result.
Carapaz couldn't drop Toro, how can he win again?
 
Jun 8, 2010
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Well done Simon!
Rest is not worth of a comment, especially UAE, though IDT looked at his limit especially in the sterrato part.
 
May 16, 2015
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In some cultures saving face is more important than anything - today we saw a prime example of that.
 
Mar 4, 2011
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So, I'm curious, was Yates' behavior at the end of Stage 19 (we had a plan, we didn't follow it) all part of the smokescreen to convince others he was no longer a threat? Probably not, but still interesting to know what that was all about.
 
Feb 20, 2010
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Who's they for the first minute though? It's not that Carapaz didn't put in efforts to get back to Yates, just didn't work. You can say del Toro was being an idiot, but I disagree about Carapaz at that point. If anything he attacked to much and should've gone up a more steady pace, but than again that's not exactly his style.
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.

Once there was an established gap, Yates proved that he was the strongest man on the day and would likely have got away anyway, but it might not have been a decisive margin, certainly not enough that the two behind gave up so soon on the final climb.

A bit like how David Arroyo was only about 40" behind Basso, Nibali and Scarponi at Edolo, but over 3 minutes back in Aprica, because he just couldn't get any cooperation from the likes of Vino and Evans who he'd caught and passed on the descent, and so the easy climb built up as big if not bigger gaps as the harder one before.