Really had high, high hopes when I saw Bagioli able to join the breakaway, and also seeing who he was up against. A bit of a disappointment to then end 6th, but still a very good stage for us, as we were definitely in the fight for the stage win.
Congratulations, DD! What a way to round of a sensational Giro for you.
Where the spring up until the Giro gave no answers regarding who was the front runners for the PT crown, I don't think it's an overstatement to say you've suddenly put yourself in an amazing position with this Giro!
So close Would've been an amazing story for Küng if he had taken the win here, but sadly Sprint is the only stat where he's below 70
Can't blame him for getting 2nd though, still a very cool result - I've been hoping for this type of attack all race long, and rather by Errazkin, but to see Küng getting this result is great! Losing out to a Gazelle man was kind of obvious in this race
The break obviously massively hurt Szarka's chances for a good finish in the points standings - 6th somehow feels too low for what he delivered - but I'll happily take all the points we got. And while I haven't even tried to sum them up yet, there are a lot of them, definitely far more than we could realistically expect. Küng would've needed that 10' gap to have a shot at the Top 50, but the difference between 58th and 50th is far smaller than the points for 2nd place on the stage anyway...
What to expect tomorrow then? Well, our 3 riders from 51st to 100th are safe, neither should drop out nor will improve enough.
For Errazkin, I was hoping for a Top 30, but with Aleotti gaining more than 6mins today, this will be close. He should easily overtake Williams, but Aranburu might just be a tad too far away. Not that it would matter a lot points-wise, but Top 30 would still be something.
So then, what about Stüssi? In any case, he should improve on his best GT GC finish so far, which was 8th in Giro last year. Which was already amazing, and I didn't think he would beat that. He almost certainly will, with Almeida, Hirt and Wellens being all worse than him in TTs and Tao probably just too far away.
On the other hand, the 21" gap to Eastman in 7th looks too small to defend it with -2 TT - unless Stüssi gets better daily form. And the 19" gap to Choi in 5th will likely be a tad too large to overcome, although it could still work. But I estimate the gap per stat point difference to about 15" - we'll see how accurate that is.
At the top, there's no way Herklotz will lose the GC. Carthy should be safe, too, he's not that awful in TTs after all. And it looks pretty good for Latour, too - he'd need to have an awful day and one of the next riders would have to ride the TT of their life... There's not much potential for Olivier to improve, and not much realistic danger coming from behind, either - at least that's my rough estimation. But we'll see
Thanks for the report, and good luck to all for the final dash!
And obviously congrats again to DD, it's definitely been an awesome race for you!
Happy to see there were no stage 20 shenanigans. With Walls not competing in the sprint anyway, the breakaway doesn't matter to me. Happy to clinch the KOM tie, even if it was anticlimactic from a neutral perspective.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Before I begin, first of all, thank you to kandesbunzler for the phenomenal reports throughout and the consistent pace. Truly a treat to either wake up to or read after work every day. An amazing effort and fantastic reads the whole way through.
Second, congratulations to cio! He always should have had this one in the bag, and it's a deserved victory for the GOAT. Happy to finish second behind him.
Then for us—what a race in the end. Despite the many ups and downs, it really couldn't have gone better for us. Carthy losing time on stage 1 might have been the difference in his breakaway move, and that move was probably the greatest thing to ever happen to Carlsberg. Without it, Carthy loses huge time in the TT and finishes like 11th or 12th. With it, he finishes 2nd overall in the Giro, obviously our best GT result ever (though Warbasse's TOA was great), and that's a vast overperformance compared to what we expected coming here. It's the kind of result that makes up for bad results throughout the year and gives us way more to work with than we expected, not that we can get complacent. Hugh Carthy is already a hero in our colors.
Then you add in all the extras and it's even better. First of all, the Carthy stage win on the king stage up Zoncolan was an incredible moment (and more scoring!). With a couple of days passed, I'm willing to accept Ulrich's interpretation of events for my own happiness. It was a glorious day not only points wise, but in a display or aggression, risk-taking, and fortitude.
It also netted us the tie for the KOM jersey, which is amazing. When Carthy scooped up some points as a domestique in the first week, I guess it ended up being worth it! It was awesome to see him in blue, and iirc, this should be our first GT jersey of all time! Hope to pick up some more next year with Skjelmose in white. Our depth also ended up being sufficient if not great. Aranburu crashed a bit to 31st, but Eg in 39th and Skjelmose in 44th are nice bonuses when you have 2nd place overall. Also netted us a team classification 2nd, which is cool. I feel like we also manage to overperform in team classifications compared to the individual placings of our top few GC guys, I guess through consistency on stages.
The only area we could have improved on was the stage placings in the sprints and hills. Walls got a few decent results, but overall underwhelmed. Certainly can't complain compared to Van Poppel though. And Aranburu had moments in the first week, but then seemed to fall off a cliff and didn't contest a few stages in the second week with the other puncheurs, which was disappointing. But given his recovery and such, sending him to a GT is always a risk.
So, a tremendous effort for us. We won't know the full story until the monthly rankings come out, but I'm certainly happy with how it went.
Thank you again to kandes and everyone who's participated in the discussion!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Done and dusted! Big thanks to kandesbunzler for all the reports!
A decent race for us. Not much luck with the breaks in general in the race, but think we showed ourselves good for the most part. Trondsen and Gaudu also here and there with some top 10s on hilly/flat stages, and top 20 in GC for Vingegaard. Can't really expect much more.
Congrats to cio on the GC win and to all else who had a good race!
This was supposed to be our best GT of the year, but it left quite a sour taste in my mouth. The sprints were pretty much a disaster, while Formolo didn't quite impress either. He didn't break the top 10 in the GC, he wasn't exactly a constant name at the battle for the stage wins when it came down between the favorites group for it and he lost the KoM jersey in very frustrating matter.
First of all, joining the others in thanking you very much for the great reports throughout the last 3 weeks, kb! Fantastic job
Even though it sucks to lose out on 6th place by just 5 seconds in the end, and on 5th place by a mere 12 seconds, this obviously has been an awesome race for us! Stüssi improving on last year's 8th place couldn't be expected (maybe hoped for once we saw the startlist, though) - but it's Szarka's success that was pretty surprising! In fact, he ended up being the best sprinter in the points standings - when that's only good enough for 6th place, you know it wasn't a tour for the sprinters at all, though. But three podiums - thereof his first career win - and two more Top 5s are far more than we could expect from him. Definitely the revelation of this Giro - he'll have some pretty good arguments come renewal time!
Which on the other hand is absolutely not the case for Xuban Errazkin. We brought him because of the many hilly stages, and he did: almost nothing. It's really disappointing that he didn't even try, except for the mountain stages where he couldn't keep up anyway. 30th place in GC is a better than expected final result and partially makes up for the lack of stage results, but we were definitely hoping for more. Fortunately, Szarka jumped in to get these points
The TTT stage was another big highlight, getting our first TTT podium at PT level. The final ITT was less successful, but given that Rekita was only beaten by stronger or better rounded TTers, there's nothing to complain about. We'll need a better TTer next year, and that's nothing new.
All in all, we definitely exceeded the 300 points expectation by a mile. I'm pretty sure we were less successful than last year, where Bol rocked the sprints even more than Szarka did this year, but last year we could basically send our best riders without any restrictions. And even though we expected this to be our lowest scoring GT pre-season (due to low expectations for Szarka), I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being our highest scoring one...
Last but not least, congrats to all those who did well! Huge congrats to Herklotz, this was the perfect route for him - and all other top climbers knew that and stayed away, allowing him to get a monster score. Even though he couldn't quite make it 21 days in Pink due to the one sprint stage where he lost it, it was an amazing race - and in all honesty, I'm glad he can't be further trained now
Congrats also to Gazelle, who had their Lutsenko gamble paying off big, big time - and also had plenty of other good contributors.
And congrats to Carlsberg, where the Carthy move definitely made up for last year's Giro shenanigans! Yes, Carthy was one of the riders I was hoping to beat because of his low TT, but he was just amazing uphill in the final days!
Thank you a lot for the reports, kandesbunzler! They've been great to read and look forward to
Also congratulations to many different teams, as it feels like there were several teams having very good races. Cool to see!
For us, I'm happy with the Giro. AHJ got what we came here for with the stage win. That was why we brought him here, and he duly delivered. Had hoped he would also do a decentish GC and fight for white, but that was clearly not meant to be. Made it even better when he won the breakaway stage in a very surprising way, being a not too hard hilly stage. Then we also had Laporte giving us lots of extra coverage and points with his fight for the KoM jersey, and having it for almost two weeks, is a very nice bonus for us
Outside of wildcards this was our worst Grand Tour to date. The whole team was bad from the TTs to the mountains. It's hard to see a better route for TGH and he still manages to fail getting a top 10. I'm likely going to need a big shake up in my GT planning going forward.
Thanks for the wonderful and consistent reporting KB!
Unfortunately my team was rather anonymous apart from when they struggled, so it was hard for me to get very invested in the race as a whole.
Thank you very much for the superb reporting in the last three weeks, kandesbunzler! Great reports
Nice to see Zmorka win the finishing time trial. One of the objectives of sending him here is to 'finish' his Los Pollos/Oxxo career in style with a GT win, and I'm very happy he was able to do so. Decent fourth place by Sütterlin as well in that stage. So we leave the Giro with two stage wins, that is what we hoped for before the race.
But sadly the rest wasn't. Eastman seemed to be in a bad form early on and seems like he never really recovered. Finishing podium was the goal and a must here, and luckily he actually had a good time trial to jump from seventh to fifth, because the rest of his racing was very subpar. Really no excuse to barely get top 10's in mountain stages and finish behind riders like Stüssi on a real mountain stage, but stage after stage it was just getting worse. Also a lot of unnecessary time loss on the not too hard hilly stages which clearly didn't help. Our race was mostly all-in on one guy (GC-wise), and he simply didn't perform as he should, which is of course a shame for what should have been a race to boost our survival chances. Lopez Nolasco around 35th in GC is also rather low for a 79 mountain guy, you could argue that he was used as a domestique, but then again other domestiques with like 3/4/5 mtn stat far above him, so no excuses really.
We'll leave with some positive news though, 5th in GC is our best even result in a GT, and at least it's better than where we were at at the start of stage 21 as well
Once again, thank you very much for the amazing reports, kb!
This was one of the worst GTs by my team ever probably. I didn't bring a strong team but I definitely hoped to get at least some more results in either the sprints or from breakaways.
Thank you kb for the great report throughout the last weeks. It was fun following the race. Congrats to cio for the overall win and also to dd who had the gamble with his team selection pay off majorly.
Thanks guys! This has been an incredible Giro for Gazelle and Aleotti taking stage 20 is the icing on the cake.
I like how the entire team contributed. Lutsenko with his multiple stage successes, long pink jersey run, 2nd place in the PC and 17th place in GC. Leknessund by winning the U25 and 18th in GC. Aleotti by winning a stage and 27th in GC. Carboni by getting 15th in GC and 6th in KoM. Senni by getting 26th in GC. And Pavlic, Nsengimana and Hofer by being the TTT engine that made Lutsenko's pink campaign possible. It is fitting that this collective performance netted us the TC with a 20 minute difference to number two. It's almost as if the MG gods wanted to make up for last year's disaster.
Congrats on the win cio! Herklotz was invincible as always. Even late stage Giro breakaway shenanigans can't crack him.
The Carlsberg story arc was epic. Congrats bbl and good luck recovering from the whiplash.
And last but certainly not least: a big shoutout to kandesbunzler. Great job!
Would've been an amazing story for Küng if he had taken the win here, but sadly Sprint is the only stat where he's below 70 
