Benson Bulletin: Giro d'Italia stage 14 🇮🇹
Danish delight, but a crash has a major impact on the GC standings
Hello Subscribers,
With around 150km to go, I must admit, I was starting to doze off. Perhaps it was the nature of the stage, maybe it was the four hot dogs I had for lunch. We’ll never know. There simply hasn’t been enough scientific research. But I’m glad I kept my eyes open, because that was one of the most gripping stages of this year’s Giro d’Italia.
We had a successful long-range breakaway and a thumping comeback win for Kasper Asgreen, and then the overall standings were given a major shake-up due to a crash on wet roads with around 22 kilometres to go. Of course, crashes are never welcome or to be celebrated, but the incident, which took down several GC contenders, created a pulsating final 45 minutes of racing as groups splintered and riders fought for their lives to remain in contention.
Today, we’ll summarise the results and what this all means ahead of tomorrow’s mountain stage to Asiago. We’ll cover Isaac Del Toro's growing stature and lead, Juan Ayuso and Primož Roglič's latest misstep (is it panic stations for Roglič?), Asgreen’s win, and, of course, the complexion of the new GC standings.
We’ll also discuss whether Visma-Lease a Bike should have waited after the crash.
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Daniel 🌭
Arise Asgreen 👑 🇩🇰
Signing any rider comes with risk, but that’s certainly true of EF Education-Easypost’s recruitment of Kasper Asgreen.
Here was a rider who had endured a challenging 18 months on the bike, marked by injuries, illnesses, and a lack of form, all of which had buffered what had been a blossoming career. When he joined the American team at the end of last year, it wasn’t clear whether Jonathan Vaughters had signed a rider destined to continue a downward trajectory or if there was still life in the versatile Dane. Many riders leave Soudal Quick-Step and never replicate their results from the Belgian squad, and the start of 2025 had that unsettling feeling as Asgreen was forced out of Paris-Nice and then missed a significant portion of the Classics.
But there were still glimmers of hope to be found, such as his sixth at the Worlds last year and a couple of early cameos in EF colours this season - including 12th in the second TT during the Giro.
Then today happened, and the Dane delivered a performance every bit as impressive as his Tour stage win from 2023. He spent 184km in the break, whittling down the opposition to just two riders on the finishing circuit, before leaving his final companions behind with 6.1km to go.
At no point in the day did Asgreen’s break lead the bunch with anything like a significant gap, but EF didn’t put the Dane in the break by chance, and with a technical finishing circuit and the prospect of rain, there was always a chance that a move could hold off the charging peloton. Sure, it was a gamble, but so was signing Asgreen in the first place. However, sometimes, and in the right environment, gambles do pay off.
Luck helped today, of course. The rain, the crash, all played a part, but the tables turned in the Dane’s favour when Asgreen was in full TT mode against Simon Yates with around 5km remaining. Asgreen had already burned off strong opposition chasing from Josh Tarling (before the crash) and Wout van Aert, and Yates was the last roll of the dice for the chase group.
Yates was fresher, but he’s no match for Asgreen in a drag race on the flat.
In the final few kilometres, the gap between Asgreen and those behind never fluctuated outside of 14 and 18 seconds, a testament to Asgreen’s strength. Kudos to Richard Carapaz and Mikkel Frølich Honoré - the latter a rider EF needs to extend with immediately - for running interference from the second group on the road, but in the end, it didn’t have much of an impact. This day was all about Asgreen and EF’s gamble paying off.
Stage 14 results 🇮🇹
Ciccone’s GC bid ends, while Tiberi loses ground 🇮🇹
Before we analyse the results of Roglič, Ayuso, Del Toro and Simon Yates, we’ll start with Giulio Ciccone, who lost over 18 minutes today and was the biggest GC victim of the crash.