It’s no surprise that the Giro d’Italia could be won by Richard Carapaz, Simon Yates or Isaac del Toro - it’s the race that brings chaos

There’s something about the Giro d’Italia which always seems to supply chaos, in the original Greek sense of there being a void to be filled. There’s a bit of disorder thrown in, too it’s unpredictable, and there is also rarely one rider or team in charge. Maybe it’s the time of year, maybe it’s the terrain, or maybe it’s the riders that turn up, but it’s different to other Grand Tours. While the Tour de France is so important that it often goes to plan, its Italian cousin offers something wilder. Part of the reason, too, obviously, is that neither Tadej Pogačar or Jonas Vingegaard is here, nor Remco Evenepoel, and the race is much more open as a result.

This year’s Giro was supposed to be a straight shootout between Primož Roglič of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, and UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s Juan Ayuso. The pair had traded blows at the Volta a Catalunya, and it was widely believed that it would, on form, be these two riders vying for the pink jersey. 16 stages into the race, and neither will win the race. Roglič, as he seems to do often, has crashed out of the race, while Ayuso has lost enough time - 13:27 - to mean he’s out of contention.

In their place, another group of contenders has emerged. The top three on general classification after an electric stage 16 - Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) - are not surprising, the latter two having won Grand Tours before, but neither came with electric form. The last race they took part in was the Volta a Catalunya, where they both finished just inside the top 10 overall, while Roglič and Ayuso were way ahead.

Adam Becket

News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com - should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.

At the Giro, just 31 seconds separate the trio in contention, with just five stages to go, three of which are very much days in the high mountains. On Tuesday, Del Toro was the man going backwards, while Carapaz very much strode forward, but this dynamic is not set in stone, with yet more chaos possible. It would be easy to extrapolate that Carapaz will now win the Giro, and he looks in fantastic form and confidence, but that would be discrediting his rivals. “We’re going all the way to Rome”, he said post-stage, but Del Toro and Yates plan to do the same.

Carapaz himself is not new to upsetting supposed favourites, that is how he won the Giro d’Italia before, in 2019, beating the much-fancied Roglič and Vincenzo Nibali to the pink jersey. He's been on the receiving end of it too, losing to Jai Hindley on the final day in the mountains in 2022. Yates, meanwhile, was on the receiving end of final week chaos in 2018, as he lost pink and dropped out of contention on the antepenultimate day, when Chris Froome’s famous Finestre attack upended the race. Del Toro is here as a debutant, but still has the race lead, and cannot be discounted, despite cracking on Tuesday. All three are in contention.

It has been said that the Giro’s backloaded route makes the race a stalemate until the very end, the kind of thing that happened in 2023 when Roglič pipped Geraint Thomas to victory. However, the action-packed final week also means that there can be these huge upheavals on general classification right to the very end. Friday and Sunday, stages 19 and 20, both feature over 4,000 metres of climbing, and could turn the race on its head. It’s a race which demands attention, and also buy-in - like the boxset that a friend says gets better after the first couple of series. Strangely, this makes it even better, as you’re already well into the action by the time the decisive, exciting moments happen.

While the Tour for the last decade has mostly been won by either the outstanding favourite, or second favourite - the exceptions being Geraint Thomas in 2018 and Egan Bernal in 2019, possibly - the Giro has thrown up all kinds of scenarios, from Tom Dumoulin to Jai Hindley, via Carapaz and Tao Geoghegan Hart. And these are just the winners, let alone the podiums and top 10s. The openness should be celebrated.

I don’t know how this week will play out. Carapaz looks good, in the form of his life possibly, but Simon Yates is very much still there, and we don’t know how Del Toro will respond to his first ever setback as race leader. It’s posed perfectly, like only the Giro can do.

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