Giro d'Italia: Winners and losers from the epic Siena gravel stage 🇮🇹
We have a new GC contender in Isaac del Toro as Ayuso crashes, Roglič loses time, and Ineos pay for their aggression. A full 3,500 words on one stage!?
Good morning subscribers,
Firstly, an apology. Last night was a logistical nightmare; my laptop died, and I didn’t arrive at the hotel until almost 10:00 p.m. Thanks for your patience. 🫶
A reminder: I’m hosting an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session throughout the day, so paid subscribers, feel free to post your questions right here.
We kick off our rest-day coverage with a long analysis story on the winners and losers from the Siena gravel stage at the Giro d’Italia. We focus on the key contributors to the stage, along with the GC contenders, after several of them had mixed fortunes following a crash with 51km to go that took down Primož Roglič, Tom Pidcock, Juan Ayuso, and others.
We examine what the stage means for the GC battle, how UAE Team Emirates may have a new contender in Isaac Del Toro, but that their dominance is far from certain ahead of the challenging mountain stages that come in the final week, and how Roglič is down but certainly not out.
There’s analysis over Egan Bernal’s cameo after Del Toro dropped the Colombian, and a run-through for the rest of the GC stars. We have quotes from Wout van Aert, Roglič, Max Poole and Zak Dempster.
I’ll have further stories throughout the day, including one on gravel tech from yesterday.
Don’t forget, you can follow my Giro coverage on my Instagram account, and to coincide with the race, I’ve set up a ✨ special 20% sale ✨ on annual subscriptions. Just click on the link below to sign up. For roughly £1 a week, you get all the stories on my Substack, including all the transfer exclusives.
Daniel 🫶
Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) 🐝
There’s only one place to start, with the stage winner Wout van Aert.
A few days ago, as the media stood outside the Visma-Lease a Bike team bus, the question we were all quietly wondering was ‘when would Van Aert pull the pin on his Giro d’Italia ordeal and head home for some much-needed R&R before the Tour?’
But the Visma rider persevered through those tough days, and on stage 9, he was rewarded with his maiden Giro stage win, a 50th career victory and his place in history as a stage winner in all three Grand Tours.
And what a scene on which to reach those milestones: on the very streets of Siena on which he broke into our consciousness as a bona fide road rider, after he finished third in the 2018 edition of Strade Bianche.
That day, when he slumped on the ground and against the barriers, it was clear for all to see that Van Aert would be a star. However, after years of incredible success, some of that sparkle had faded. Several major crashes, resulting injuries, and a blow to his confidence led many to question whether the very best of Van Aert was behind him. At times, the criticism has been excessive. Some have questioned his motivation and commitment, and he has even had to defend the amount of time he spends with his family, which is a ludicrous position to put a rider in.
Then on Sunday, Van Aert delivered a truly vintage display of brilliance and resilience, latching onto the winning move when Isaac del Toro and Ineos soared clear, and then using his experience to outfox the Mexican in the final sprint to the line. It wasn’t easy - Del Toro was on another planet, riding as though he was in an entirely different race at times, and Van Aert was desperately hanging on. However, he had more in the tank than the Ineos trio who made the winning move, and all of a sudden, Visma’s Giro has taken a turn for the better. They have their stage win, Simon Yates came through unscathed, and Van Aert is back in the winner’s circle.
For the Belgian, this win couldn’t come soon enough. He’s been weighed down with pressure and expectation for so long, and after missing out on a win in the Classics, he needed a day like today to prove to everyone, including himself, that he was still capable of rides like this. Even in the finale, most bets were on Del Toro, but Van Aert wouldn’t settle for second place. Honestly, it was one of his best-ever performances.
"Siena is a special place to me, and I'm an emotional person. Places like this motivate me, and they inspire me, and I feel like it was meant to be. It's easy to say this victory means a lot to me, and I almost cannot explain it. It had to be here. This is where my road career started back in 2018, and to win this stage after a long period without delivering, finally again it feels so good," the Belgian said at the finish.
Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) 🇲🇽
Coming into the race, UAE Team Emirates-XRG positioned Adam Yates and Juan Ayuso as their respective leaders. Yes, Isaac del Toro was on the team, but few gave him a chance to be a factor on GC.
That’s all changed now, and even though UAE are externally stating that their GC plans have not changed, everyone at the Giro, including the team’s rivals, considers the Mexican rider to be the real thing.
The 21-year-old was immense on Sunday, riding with a combination of power and precision and not just standing up to three more experienced Ineos Grenadiers riders in the winning break but knocking them off one by one.
It honestly felt, at specific points, like Del Toro was toying with them. To be fair, Arensman had a mechanical and Rivera was there to work for Bernal, but Del Toro still initiated the move and then made an awe-inspiring Bernal look extraordinarily ordinary on the final two gravel sectors. Del Toro could have raced another 30km and still arrived at the finish looking fresh. It was notable that he maintained around a minute on the chasing pack for most of the last 30km. He’s the strongest rider on UAE right now and the strongest rider in the race by default.
Del Toro now sits 1:13 ahead of Ayuso, who crashed and needed stitches in his knee, while Adam Yates is two minutes in arrears. Yes, the Giro d’Italia is long, but will another UAE rider attack Del Toro at this point? It’s unlikely.
The only certainties are that Isaac del Toro is a GC contender from this moment forth, and that we’re going to get a lot of ‘Is Del Toro the next Tadej Pogačar’ editorials in the next few days. Do yourself a favour and unsubscribe from those publications.