A piece of cake?
The Tour will be far more difficult, with Pogačar and teenage wonder Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) now scheduled to participate. But the Giro looks like a piece of cake for Vingegaard, who is having a terrific year after announcing at the end of 2025 that he had finally recovered from the effects of a devastating crash in the 2024 Itzulia Basque Country.
After a training crash disrupted his early season schedule, he easily won Paris-Nice and the Volta a Catalunya in March and certainly looked as good as ever. And he is not meeting any world-beaters in the Giro – though Egan Bernal (Netcompany INEOS ) won the 2019 Tour and the 2021 Giro, Jai Hindley (Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe) took the 2022 Giro and Hindley’s 22-year-old teammate Giulio Pellizzari looked very good in winning the Tour of the Alps.
In that victory the young Italian beat out Bernal, Hindley, Michael Storer (Tudor Pro Cycling) and Ben O’Connor (Jayco AlUla), all of whom are capable of making onto the podium – as is Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates–XRG). Of these riders, I think Pellizzari will come closest to Vingegaard because his form is on the upswing and he still has a large upside. He finished sixth in last year’s Giro and should do much better this year, assuming that he, and not Hindley, will be Red Bull’s main man in the race.
But without the likes of Pogačar, Seixas, the injured Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek), the ill João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates–XRG) and his teammate Isaac del Toro, who is being saved for the Tour, this edition of the Giro is a little thin on top riders. And Vingegaard will have a superior support team in the race, with old friend Sepp Kuss and the indefatigable Victor Campenaerts dragging him up the Giro’s climbs. Barring accident or illness, this race is Vingegaard’s to lose.
That doesn’t mean it’s going to be boring. Far from it. Netcompany INEOS have a new name sponsor (and so a new name) and a strong team to support Bernal or Thymen Arensman, who also has an outside podium chance. And Red Bull also have formidable support riders in Hindley and Aleksandr Vlasov to help Pellizzari, who is an exciting and audacious competitor.
A Bulgarian Partenza and other surprises
There are a few novelties in the race, the most important being the Bulgarian Grande Partenza. For the first time in history, the Giro begins in Bulgaria, making it the 12th foreign country to host the start, and spends three days there. In addition, in order to attract superstars like Pogačar and Vingegaard, Giro organisers reduced the number of long, steep climbs in favour of shorter, punchier mountain stages so that riders wanting to race the Tour would not come out of the race too exhausted.
As a result, altitude gained was reduced from more than 52,000 metres in 2025 to 49,150 metres this year, two of the mountain stages are very short (stage 14 is 133 km and stage 16 is only 113 km long) and the summit finish on the queen stage, stage 19 (5,000 m of elevation), is only a category 2 climb (5 km @ 9.7%). That should improve the chances of Pellizzari et al. a tiny bit against Vingegaard, who likes long climbs. But almost certainly not enough, so expect the Dane to be wearing the maglia rosa, the race leader’s pink jersey, when the race ends in Rome on May 31.
This change is not as drastic a climbing reduction as that in 2024, when organisers had fewer than 43,000 metres of elevation in order to tempt Pogačar to ride the race without ruining his chances for the Giro-Tour double. He rode and, as we know, he doubled. The irony is that Vingegaard would have ridden the Giro anyway because he really wants the Giro-Tour-Vuelta set of trophies. “Winning all three Grand Tours or the Tour de France in 2026?” he reflected aloud in La Dernière Heure last year. “I think I’d rather win the three Grand Tours.”
Sprinters are happy
The changes will give more chances to sprinters because there are at least seven stages that are likely to end in bunch sprints and create more stages in which a strong breakaway could make it to the end, something that is becoming increasingly rare. That means there should be some top sprinters at the Giro going for the maglia ciclamino, the purple jersey worn by the leader of the points classification. And there are.
For my money, Lidl-Trek’s Jonathan Milan is the best sprinter in the sport at the moment. He has won seven races already this year and is coming into the Giro well rested, having last raced a month ago in Paris-Roubaix. In addition, he won the purple jersey in 2023 and 2024, then skipped the race last year in favour of the Tour, where he won the green jersey. He’s also a very good climber for someone who is so quick, stands at 1.94 m and weighs 84 kg, and should benefit as well from the reduction in altitude gained.
His toughest competition should come from 22-year-old Paul Magnier (Soudal Quick-Step), who has yet to live up to his promise and has never won a Grand Tour stage. He rode in last year’s Giro, with a best showing of third before abandoning after stage 15. But he won two stages and the green jersey in this year’s Volta ao Algarve and looks to be capable of winning a stage or two in the Giro.
But he will also have to best Alpecin–Premier Tech’s Kaden Groves, who has won eight Grand Tour stages and the Vuelta points classification twice. But he has had his season disrupted by a lingering knee issue. It forced him to abandon Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne on March 1, and he has not raced since. This makes him something of a question mark, but if he returns fit and at his best, he will be a tough rival for Milan and Magnier.