Turn 25. Instructions for use. Wednesday, May 28. Stage 17. Departure from the north of Trento, arrival in Bormio, gateway to the Dolomites. 154 kilometers. Two passes in the middle of the route, the classic and easy Tonale, a second, and the apparently terrifying Mortirolo, which will not be so terrifying: it is located almost 50 kilometers from the finish line and you ascend through Monno, the easy side (12, 6 kilometers at 7.6%), and to reach Bormio the Stelvio is sadly avoided: the runners will only pass through the crossroads of the road that ascends from the city to the giant of the Alps. A transitional stage in epic territory. There will be no giants, ports that touch the clouds at almost 3,000 meters, perpetual snow. Neither Bondone nor Gavia nor Stelvio nor Zoncolan nor Marmolada nor the Three Peaks of Lavaredo. Not even Pordoi.
In its place, an exit from Albania, a somewhat neocolonial return from Italy 80 years after having to abandon what was once occupied territory, part of the empire that Mussolini wanted to dream of in the Balkans, the times of an invented king called Zog and of the communist partisans led by Enver Hoxha who liberate the country in November 1944. The Nazi defeat in World War II. The Liberation of Italy on April 25, 1945, and a few weeks later, army corporal Fausto Coppi arrives in Naples after two years of captivity in Tunisia, a prisoner of the British Army, and asks in a newspaper for help so that someone can lend him a bicycle. to train again, he, who in 1940, at the age of 20, had already won his first Giro. The past is resurrected in the form of a center for immigrants expelled from Italy and a tag-loving bicycle race.
The fight for what they like to call the most virginal DNA, the most attractive marketing label for what fans want, leads to great detours into stupidity and paradox. The Tour and the Vuelta, traditionalists as always, are committed to a rejuvenation cure that leads them to curl and almost denature their routes, while the Giro, owner of the wildest scenery, the Dolomites, in the most meteorologically unpredictable month, May, seeks to soften its inevitable hardness, which leads to contradiction.
“It will be a progressively tough route that will end in a hard last week but without exaggerations, without a monstrous stage that dictates the sentence,” they explain from the organization of a race that will start on May 9, Friday, from Durrës, on the Adriatic coast. , and will end on June 2, Sunday, in Rome. “This will force daily attacks, without the excuse of waiting to play the hardest all day.”
With 52,500 meters of total accumulated elevation gain, a thousand meters more than the Tour, the 2025 Giro, announced today, presents the apparently most mountainous route in recent years — 42,900 meters in 2024 (Pogacar exhibition); 51,300 in 2023 (Roglic); 50,948 in 2022 (Hindley); 46,900 in 2021 (Egan)—, toughness that, when examined closely, becomes almost sweet, to the delight of debutant Juan Ayuso, who will have 43 kilometers against the clock (14 + 29) in his favor, and will even be able to dress in pink on the streets from Tirana on the second day, and will only be penalized with three high mountain finishes, the lowest number in recent years: a finish in the southern Apennines (Tagliacozzo, 12 kilometers at 5% in the seventh stage), one in the Trento Alps (San Valentino, 17 kilometers at 6.4%), and, perhaps the biggest day, Sestriere in the penultimate stage after ascending Le Finestre and its eight kilometers without asphalt). It will be the day of Mikel Landa, who at a similar stage stopped in 2015, after pinning Alberto Contador, in pink, to protect the second place of his Astana teammate Fabio Aru. It will be, together, perhaps, with the previous stage, the 19th through the Aosta Valley, the only one that will make the Alava climber dream.
There will be no stage of more than 5,000 meters of altitude difference, the limit between very hard and exaggeratedly hard, nor more than six hours long. Flying, like the hidden Dolomites, the old trademarks of the Giro that made Coppi and Pantani legendary. There will, yes, be tourist and nostalgic stages in Tuscany, a sign of the times, a pinch of sterratoalong the roads of the Strade Bianche towards Siena (novena, Sunday, May 18) and a time trial amarcord29 kilometers between Lucca and Pisa (tenth, May 20), like the one in 1977 in which the Norwegian Knut Knudsen, a colossus born for the track and time trials, flew at 50 per hour, one minute ahead of the untouchable Francesco Moser.
Ayuso, 22 years old and debutant in the corsa rosa, and Landa (35, eighth participation, two podiums and three stage victories) are the Spanish hope against a participation that is announced to be dense, led by Primoz Roglic, winner in 2023, and , perhaps, Jonas Vingegaard, the winner of two Tours who has never ridden the Giro.
The route of the women’s Giro was also presented at the Ennio Morricone auditorium in Rome, which will be held in eight stages, from Sunday, July 6 to Sunday, July 13, coinciding with the men’s Tour. The race will begin in Bergamo with a 13.6km individual time trial and will end at the Enzo and Dino Ferrari circuit in Imola, where Julian Alaphilippe won the 2020 World Championship. The queen stage in which the best Spaniards, Eneritz Vadillo or Mavi García, They will be measured against the foreseeable ones —Demi Vollering, Kasia Newiadoma…— it will be the penultimate, 3,850 meters of altitude difference in a circuit of 157km through the Apennines that mark the border between Umbria and Marche, ending at the top of Monte Nerone, after a 10km ascent at 8%. On those roads in the 2009 men’s Giro, Carlos Sastre achieved one of his toughest victories, on Mount Petrano after overcoming the Nerone and at the end of a route of more than seven hours and almost 240 kilometers.
Women’s Giro route:
July 6, 1st stage, Bergamo-Bérgamo, 13.6km (CRI)
July 7, 2nd stage, Clusone-Áprica, 99km
July 8, 3rd stage, Vezza d’Oglio-Trento, 124km
July 9, 4th stage, Castello Tesino-Valdobbiadene, 156km
July 10, 5th stage, Mirano-Monselice, 108km
July 11, 6th stage, Bellaria-Orciano di Pésaro, 144km
July 12, 7th stage, Fermignano-Monte Nerone, 157km
July 13, 8th stage, Forlì-Imola, 138km
