photo credits @ Giro d’Italia
Simon Yates is poised to win the Giro d’Italia after an epic climb from third place to race leader by a comfortable margin in today’s penultimate stage.
Yates, the 2018 Vuelta a Espana champion, overcame an 81-second deficit in the overall standings at the start of today’s 20th stage.
He did it on the 11-mile Colle delle Finestre, the same Cottian Alps climb where he was dropped on the 19th stage of the 2018 Giro, going from leader to 35 minutes behind. Today, Yates finished third on the day behind Australian stage winner Chris Harper.
In the overall standings, Yates overtook both Richard Carapaz of Ecuador and Isaac del Toro, the leader for 11 stages whose hopes of becoming the first rider from Mexico to win a Grand Tour are all but extinguished.
Yates turned that 81-second deficit into a lead of 3:56 over del Toro. Del Toro, who was smiling after Saturday’s stage, is still in line to become the first cyclist from Mexico to finish on a Grand Tour podium
Tomorrow’s 21st and final stage — a flat, 143km ride around Vatican City and Rome — is not expected to shake up the top of the overall standings.
Del Toro, 21, was bidding to become the youngest man to win the Giro since 1940 — when Italian Fausto Coppi earned the first of his record-tying five titles.
Del Toro was already the first rider from Mexico to wear the leader jersey in any of the three Grand Tours.
Instead, Yates is on the brink of becoming the second British rider to win multiple Grand Tours after Chris Froome, who won all three, including four Tours de France.
Since that 2018 Vuelta title, Yates placed third in the 2021 Giro and fourth in the 2023 Tour.
Yates’ seven-year gap between two Grand Tour titles would be the longest since Italian Felice Gimondi won the 1969 and 1976 Giros. And the longest between a rider’s first and second Grand Tour titles specifically since Coppi won the 1940 and 1947 Giros (with World War II in between).
Yates, 32, would also give Team Visma–Lease a Bike its first Grand Tour title since the outfit swept the Giro, Tour and Vuelta with three different riders in 2023, an unprecedented feat.
Yates joined Visma this season after spending 11 years with an Australian team.
Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, who last year won his first Giro and his third Tour de France, didn’t ride this year’s Giro as he focuses on prep for July’s Tour, while his countryman, Primož Roglic, the 2023 Giro winner and four-time Vuelta champ, led after the second and seventh stages of this Giro, but abandoned on the 16th after the last of several crashes earlier in the race.
Earlier, Yate’s Visma-Lease A Bike team pulled off a masterstroke as team-mate Wout van Aert was in the breakaway group and allowed Yates to catch him on the descent, helping him build a comprehensive lead over the final 30km.
Jayco’s Chris Harper, who was the first over the Colle delle Finestre summit, claimed the second Grand Tour stage win of his career, with Yates crossing one minute 57 seconds later, third on the day.
Yates was in tears as he hugged team staff at the finish, surrounded by media, with Del Toro crossing the line five minutes after him.
It means the Briton leads Del Toro by three minutes 56 seconds, with Carapaz in third, heading in to tomorrow’s processional stage in Rome.
Yates lost 30 seconds to Del Toro during Friday’s stage but recovered to become just the third British rider to win the Giro, after Chris Froome (2018) and Tao Geoghegan Hart (2020).
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