The XL Giro d'Italia report card, part two
Ranking the top ten teams at the first grand tour of the season
How the teams fared… the top ten
by Lionel Birnie, photos courtesy of the Giro d’Italia
This list ranks the teams in reverse order according to how many UCI points they scored in the Giro d’Italia. You can read part one of our XL Giro d’Italia report card here.
10th Team Picnic PostNL
UCI points: 1069
Finishers: 7/8 (Bram Welten DNF stage 7)
Best overall: Max Poole 11th
• Casper Van Uden won a stunning – and surprising – sprint victory at Lecce when the race arrived back on Italian soil, and followed that with a second place behind Olav Kooij at Viadana.
• Max Poole put together a very solid, and mature, GC performance. He was in the top ten until the gravel stage – when he had to ride Romain Bardet’s bike for a few sections after a puncture. The fact he couldn’t hide his disappointment the day he lost time in the last week said a lot about the expectations he placed on his own performance. He was one difficult afternoon away from making the top ten overall.
• Bardet was very visible in his final grand tour and got in a lot of breaks but couldn’t clinch the dream farewell victory. He came very close at Bormio on stage 17 but was thwarted by Isaac Del Toro’s desire to reassert himself after faltering the previous day.
• A much better Giro than could have been expected from a team battling relegation from the World Tour.
9th Israel-Premier Tech
UCI points: 1090
Finishers: 7/8 (Jan Hirt DNS stage 7)
Best overall: Derek Gee 4th
• Derek Gee rode the perfect GC race and hauled himself up to fourth place in the final week to secure his best Grand Tour result, backing up last year’s ninth place finish at the Tour de France. The Canadian clearly fancied his chances of climbing onto the podium on the Finestre but he perhaps didn’t ride in a way that was likely to apply enough pressure to crack either Carapaz or Del Toro.
• Corbin Strong’s second place in the sprint in Vlorë was the closest they came to a stage win.
• Simon Clarke got into the break on each of the final two mountain stages.
• Jakob Fuglsang completed the 15th Grand Tour of his career (from 19 starts) before retirement.
8th Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe
UCI points: 1112
Finishers: 6/8 (Jai Hindley DNF stage 6; Primož Roglič DNF stage 16)
Best overall: Giulio Pellizzari 6th
• Primož Roglič started the race as the favourite to win but, apart from the opening weekend, it was an uncharacteristic performance from the Slovenian. With one eye on the Tour de France perhaps he wanted to plot his way round Italy with the minimum of fuss. Even the Red Bull KM couldn’t tempt him to try some Roglification.
• Roglič took the pink jersey in the Tirana time trial, lost it and regained it at Tagliacozzo on stage seven. But not at any stage did he, or his team, look like they wanted the burden of race leadership too early.
• A crash and puncture on the strade bianche stage cost him time but he managed to climb back up to fifth overall in the time trial at the start of the middle week. It all came undone when he crashed on stage 15, losing 1:30 to the other favourites. Bad weather at the start of stage 16 persuaded him to quit rather than do more damage to his (already slim) Tour hopes.
• Nico Denz won at Cesano Maderno a couple of days after the team lost Roglič. It was a master-class in breakaway riding. He attacked the rest of the group with 17 kilometres to go and was never seen again. By going early, and alone, he avoided getting caught out by the constant attacking that was bound to follow as they got closer to the finish.
• Giulio Pellizzari, 21, confirmed his promise by riding into sixth place overall, with third place on the stage to San Valentino and fifth at Bormio.
• Former Giro winner Jai Hindley was the highest-profile casualty of the big crash on the road to Napoli, which forced him to quit the race.
• Dani Martinez and Gianni Moscon were both very quiet but, in their defence, they were primed and ready to ride in support of Roglič’s GC bid.
7th Ineos Grenadiers
UCI points: 1232
Finishers: 6/8 (Brandon Rivera DNS stage 14; Josh Tarling DNF stage 16)
Best overall: Egan Bernal 7th
• There were flashes to suggest the 2021 champion, Egan Bernal, was getting back to something close to his best. Seventh place was his best Grand Tour result since that terrible training crash at the start of 2022. Bernal was third at Tagliacozzo, the first day there was some serious climbing, and was brilliant on the strade bianche stage, but when the biggest mountains arrived, he was a little way behind the top three.
• Josh Tarling won the time trial in Tirana - just. That was his first Grand Tour stage win. He backed that up with second in the time trial in Pisa. A heavy crash in the wet forced him out of the race on stage 16.
• It was a tough race for Thymen Arensman. After a shaky start, he rose to ninth overall after stage 15 but fell away again in the final week and ended up 29th.
6th Bahrain Victorious
UCI points: 1404
Finishers: 6/8 (Andrea Pasqualon DNF stage 9, Alfonso Eulálio DNF stage 19)
Best overall: Damiano Caruso 5th
• The 37-year-old veteran Damiano Caruso called on all his experience to gradually work his way up to fifth place overall, making him the best-placed Italian (in the final Giro of his career). He and Antonio Tiberi seemed to ride their own races and it has to be noted that Caruso looked at his most lively whenever his younger teammate was struggling.
• Tiberi wanted to follow up last year’s fifth place and went into the race with genuine podium ambitions. He was as high as third after the gravel stage but a crash on the Slovenian finishing circuit cost him two minutes and sent him tumbling to eighth. Partly due to his injuries, he slipped further down the standings in the final week and finished 17th.
• Pello Bilbao got into some breaks but was never high up overall and didn’t get close to winning a stage either.
• Bahrain Victorious are the highest-ranked team – in terms of UCI points won – that didn’t manage to win a stage.
5th XDS Astana
UCI points: 1417
Finishers: 8/8
Best overall: Diego Ulissi 21st
• An exceptional Giro for a team that has been fighting so hard to retain its World Tour status this season.
• A stage win – a one-two, no less – for Christian Scaroni in the mountains, who crossed the line side-by-side with Lorenzo Fortunato.
• Fortunato took the king of the mountains lead by winning the first big climb of the race during stage three in Albania. He got in half a dozen big breaks to build an unassailable lead in the competition by the start of the final week and, in the end, his closest challenger was his teammate Scaroni.
• Diego Ulissi gave Italy a day in the maglia rosa at Castelraimondo. The first Italian to lead the Giro since Alessandro De Marchi in 2021.
• Three top ten finishes for Max Kanter kept the points total ticking over.
4th EF Education-Easy Post
UCI points: 1670
Finishers: 8/8
Best overall: Richard Carapaz 3rd
• Richard Carapaz finished on the final podium at a Grand Tour for the fifth time in his career. He looked switched on right from the start in Albania when he was seventh on the opening stage. Brilliant on the gravel, he then sealed stage 11 with an attack on an archetypal Carapaz finish at the end of the medium-mountain day that crossed the Alpe San Pellegrino.
• Carapaz’s overall hopes were still very much alive going into the Finestre on the penultimate day. EF tried to set him up and although he tried numerous attacks he seemed in two minds what to do when Simon Yates went away. He had to shake off Del Toro, of course, but realised too late the danger that was unfolding. Nevertheless, third place overall was an excellent result.
• Kasper Asgreen won the stage that finished in Slovenia, surviving the treacherous finishing circuit. Having spent almost 180 kilometres in the break, he then simply rode his two companions off his wheel – as impressive a performance as any in the Giro.
3rd Lidl-Trek
UCI points: 2085
Finishers: 6/8 (Søren Kragh Andersen DNS stage 5; Giulio Ciccone DNS stage 15)
Best overall: Carlos Verona 54th
• You could make a very strong argument for Lidl-Trek being the team of the race. They dominated the opening phase and ended up with a huge haul: six stage wins, five pink jerseys, 21 ciclamino jerseys and five white jerseys.
• Mads Pedersen was the star of the show – and one of the men of the Giro. He won three of the first five stages – in Tirana, Vlorë and Matera – and kept the pink jersey until the first day of serious climbing. He led the points competition from start to finish and won it by miles. He even had the energy to get in a couple of big breaks right at the end of the race.
• Daan Hoole won the time trial in Pisa – perhaps he was fortunate the weather worsened for the later starters but it was nevertheless a strong ride and he beat Josh Tarling, who had ridden in similar conditions, fair-and-square by seven seconds.
• Carlos Verona’s victory at Asiago – the 32-year-old’s first stage win in his 16th Grand Tour – melted hearts.
• Mathias Vacek turned himself inside-out for the team, particularly at the start of the race, and was the best young rider for most of the first week.
• The only low point was losing Giulio Ciccone when he was poised for his first Grand Tour top ten finish. Daniel gave me quite a lot of stick for describing Ciccone as an outsider for the podium on the first day of the Giro but he was going very nicely, lying seventh overall, when he crashed on the slippery roads in Slovenia. That ended his Giro. Would he have made the podium? Probably not, but the top five wasn’t out of the question.
2nd Visma-Lease A Bike
UCI points: 3098
Finishers: 8/8
Best overall: Simon Yates 1st
• Simon Yates rode the perfect race to win the second Grand Tour of his career and banish the bad memories of his painful defeat on the Colle delle Finestre seven years ago. Every time there was a significant shake-up on GC, Yates made the cut. He rode so well on the gravel and even when he faltered slightly in the final week he stayed well in touch so he could make that extraordinary attack on the Finestre.
• Wout Van Aert came into the race after a spring of near-misses and following an illness that disrupted his preparation. He was second-best to Mads Pedersen on all the stages that suited him but won the Strade Bianche stage brilliantly. But the defining memory of Van Aert’s Giro will be his selfless support riding on the penultimate stage, without which Yates may not have been able to pull off his coup.
• Olav Kooij was the best sprinter in the race in as much as he won two stages, more than any of the other sprinters managed. That said, he was surprisingly beaten by Van Uden in Lecce and was a distant second to Pedersen in the points competition.
• Wilco Kelderman was second in Castelraimondo the day Plapp won which, at the time, seemed to sum up Visma’s woes because nothing was falling right for them at that stage. It really was a Giro that turned on Van Aert’s win in Siena.
1st UAE Team Emirates
UCI points: 3264
Finishers: 6/8 (Jay Vine DNF stage 17, Juan Ayuso DNF stage 18)
Best overall: Isaac Del Toro 2nd
• They came into the race hoping to win overall – most likely with Juan Ayuso. When the Spaniard won stage seven to Tagliacozzo he seemed to strengthen his case for outright leadership but it all unravelled from there. His young teammate Isaac Del Toro jumped ahead of him and took the pink jersey and there were rumblings of an internal battle for supremacy. At the start of the final week, Ayuso was still third, presumably waiting for the Mexican to crack. But a crash, which meant he needed stitches in his knee, did for Ayuso’s hopes – although it was the painful bee sting near his eye that finally forced him to quit. Now his future at the team looks somewhat uncertain.
• Del Toro spent 11 days in the pink jersey after taking the lead on the gravel stage. He looked vulnerable at the start of the final week but kept hold of the lead and then bounced back to win stage 17 and gain a bit more time. It wasn’t until the Finestre that his inexperienced showed but perhaps it was maturity and a sense of knowing he had a lot to lose that enabled him to stay calm and secure second place overall.
• They won the teams classification but, when Del Toro really needed a bit of support, there was no one to be seen.
• UAE had four riders in the top 13 (Del Toro second, Brandon McNulty ninth, Adam Yates 12th, Rafał Majka 13th) which explains the high points tally. But, objectively speaking, did they have a better Giro than either Visma-Lease A Bike or Lidl Trek? Arguably not.
Latest episode: Matt White’s verdict on the Giro d’Italia
This week’s episode features former Jayco-Alula sports director Matt White in conversation with Lionel Birnie. White is one of the people who knows Simon Yates best and he was in the team car during that spectacular 2018 Giro stage on the Finestre so he has a fascinating insight into how this year’s race was decided.
The Cycling Podcast reaches a milestone
Early in the Giro, we reached 100 million downloads since The Cycling Podcast started in 2013. Including all the Friends of the Podcast and KM0 episodes that are on the subscriber-only feed we’ve more than 100m downloads but it was nevertheless a nice milestone to reach as we approach our 13th Tour de France. Thank you to everyone for listening.