UAE Turns Disaster into Triumph While Ciccone Lives His Dream for a Day

GC rider Adam Yates was a DNS (did not start) on Wednesday after suffering concussion symptoms overnight while elite mountain support riders Marc Soler and Jay Vine were hospitalized because of their injuries, leaving the team with only five riders and a useless master plan. So they came up with a new one.

“Obviously this victory is also for my teammates who crashed on stage 2,” said an emotional Jhonatan Narváez after winning Tuesday’s stage 4.

Stage 4: The best-laid plans etc.

UAE owe a big thanks to Movistar for the work that team did to eliminate all the sprinters on stage 4’s only categorized climb, the Cozzo Tunno (14.5km @ 5.9%), which came with 58km left to ride on the 138km course from Catanzaro to Cosenza. Movistar’s idea was to win the stage with its own fast man, the five-time Venezuelan time trial champion Orluis Aular.

The plan worked beautifully as Magnier, Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) and the other sprinters were all dropped on the long ascent, while Aular had no trouble with the climb. But things began to go wrong 1.7km from the finish line, when UAE’s Jan Christen attacked and quickly had a substantial lead.

Working with Lidl-Trek, which was riding for its GC man Giulio Ciccone, they caught Christen 450 meters from the line, where Aular committed a fatal error. He attacked too early, in the mistaken belief that he was the fastest rider around. But Narváez zoomed past him as if he were nailed to the spot and won by about 10 meters, foiling all of Movistar’s hard work.

However, Lidl-Trek and Ciccone could rejoice, for he took over the race leader’s pink jersey from Thomas Silva (XDS Astana). It was a dream come true for the 31-year-old Italian to wear pink in his home Grand Tour. “The feeling is amazing,” he said. “I always dreamed of this jersey since I was a kid. I started this sport dreaming to wear this jersey, and I think today I realized it. I was not expecting this today after many hard moments, especially last year with the crash.” Ciccone was forced to abandon last year’s Giro after crashing on stage 14 while he had a good position in the top 10.

He said that he was hoping to wear the jersey at least until Friday’s stage 7, when the race reaches his home region of Abruzzo. “I think it [would] be super nice, but we still have to do the stage tomorrow and hard moments before we arrive there,” Ciccone said. “It’s a big dream, and why not? I feel good, we have a good team. We want to defend, and we want to go really far.”

Stage 5: Wild and crazy drama in a downpour

Unfortunately, Ciccone wore the pink jersey for only one day, though who could have foreseen the strange, rain-drenched dramatics that not only deprived him of the race lead, but also gave UAE its second consecutive stage win and left all the GC favorites more than 6 minutes behind the new and surprising race leader, 24-year-old Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain-Victorious).

Again the race exploded on a climb, the uncategorized Viggiano (5.5km @ 5.5%) when UAE’s 23-year-old Spaniard Igor Arrieta attacked out of a 13-rider breakaway group about 62km from the finish. He was soon joined by Eulálio on the ascent of the Monte Grande di Viggiano (6.6km @ 9.1%), and the two worked together effectively to keep the peloton and the numerous chase groups away all the way to the finish line.

In any case, it was cold and heavy rain lashed the course for much of the day, which dissuaded ambitious GC riders from taking unnecessary chances on such an early stage of the race. Both Arrieta and Eulálio proved that this cautious approach was the best strategy – because the Spaniard crashed 13.6km from the finish on a wet downhill curve and lost 30 seconds to his Portuguese fellow traveler, who now seemed to have the race sewn up. But . . .

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Though the rain had stopped, the road surface was still slippery, and with 6.5km left to ride Eulálio crashed on a curve. He quickly remounted and rode on, but he was soon caught by Arrieta and again it appeared that it would come down to a two-rider sprint. But . . .

Only 2km from the line, Arrieta miscalculated a curve and rode off the course and onto a ramp. By the time he got back on course, he was 10 seconds behind. Surely the win now belonged to Eulálio. Nope. The Portuguese was tiring and Arrieta remained strong. He caught his rival within sight of the finish line and outsprinted him to give his team another much-needed win. Former pink jersey holder Silva finished third, at 51 seconds.

Eulálio may have lost the stage, but he now led the race by 2:51 over Arrieta, with Christian Scaroni in third, at 3:34. Race favorite Jonas Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) – along with many other GC contenders – crossed the line 7:13 behind the winner and now trailed race leader Eulálio by 6:22.

But the day belonged to Arrieta, who registered his first WorldTour win. “I’m really happy to achieve this victory,” he said. “It means a lot for me because of the crash and the teammates that went home.” Asked if he had given up after his crash, he said, “I didn’t think it was lost. I needed to try to the end. I was completely empty in the last kilometers, and I know Eulálio is the same. . . . When I lost him at 2 kilometers I thought it was not possible [to win], but I kept pushing and saw that he could not go faster than me. When I got his wheel it’s like [wow], maybe I can win.”

Stage 6: Another crash, another surprise winner

Thursday’s stage 6 was very flat, with only a category 4 hill for the riders to climb on the 141km course from Paestum to Naples. It was a stage for the sprinters, and the race was proceeding accordingly, with a modest four-rider breakaway, whose gap rarely exceeded 1 minute, and good weather, which was a relief after the cold, slashing rain and chaos of the previous day.

But just as the peloton began to accelerate in anticipation of that sprint finish, 7.5km from the line, it began to drizzle in Naples, turning the large cobblestones of the final kilometers into treacherous obstacles. The inevitable happened about 400 meters from the finish line, when the two Unibet Rose Rockets riders leading out Dylan Groenewegen crashed as they rode into the final curve.

All the sprinters, including Groenewegen, Magnier and Milan were caught up in the ensuing mayhem, which resulted in two lead-out riders, Davide Ballerini (XDS Astana) and Soudal Quick-Step’s Jasper Stuyven racing for the win. The Italian had the lead from the crash and never relinquished it, taking his first stage victory on his home race. It was also Ballerini’s second win since the Pro-level Coppa Bernochi in October 2022.

“Today was not on the plan,” he said afterwards. “Today our sprinter was [Matteo] Malucelli. I was trying to do the maximum for him. But when we arrived on the last corner, I saw that the first two guys had a crash. I just exited from the corner, and I heard on the radio ‘Go! Go! Go! To the finish! There is a gap!’ I just started, and I was hoping the line would come really fast. I made it. I’m really happy.”

Magnier was the first of the sprinters to extricate himself from the chaos and finished third, increasing his lead in the competition for the purple jersey. He now has 130 points, well ahead of Milan’s 64 and Ballerini’s 58. That competition lost two contenders this week when Kaden Groves (Alpecin–Premier Tech) and Lotto Intermarché’s Arnaud De Lie both abandoned. Groves couldn’t overcome injuries sustained in a stage 1 crash and De Lie left due to the lingering effects of a virus.

The GC standings are certain to be scrambled on the race’s first serious mountain stage on Friday, with a summit finish atop the daunting Blockhaus climb (13.6% @ 8.4%).