Thursday’s botched sprint finish was a demonstration of terrible course-setting that endangers riders. Here’s where it went wrong and why it’s avoidable.
Two riders contested a sprint meant for dozens, thanks to a crash.
Cor Vos
“Most Giro finish ever” was the message from Editor-in-Chief Caley Fretz that rippled into the Escape Collective staff Slack as the Giro d’Italia attempted to stage an Ice Capades show on stage 6.
The stage finish certainly made for a hot topic of discussion and the crash that took down several top sprinters and altered the finish will doubtless be shown as part of the highlights reels. Thankfully, no one appears to be seriously hurt. But Caley was right: The finish was vintage Giro d’Italia, in the worst possible sense of the term.
Giro: Ballerini wins stage 6 after sprint stars crash in cobbled finale
As most of the favorites hit the deck, Davide Ballerini stays upright to get his first WorldTour win since the 2021 Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
The Giro hasn’t been kind to sprinters in many years; these days, its third week in particular is a grueling slog through the Dolomites that must be survived to have a chance to win on the Via Roma. But too often, the Giro puts other obstacles in front of the fast men, in the form of questionable course and logistics choices, both of which have already been on display in the first week of this Giro starting on stage 1 with the questionable choice to use old-style footed barriers in the final kilometer, which may have contributed to a crash there. (They were on display again today, in the crucial final corner.)
This is a well-trod path by the race, which seems somehow incomplete without a good polemica. In 2024, sprinters criticized a dangerous finish on stage 4. (The race also finished in Naples that year via a different route, which also had a four-corner setup with a U-turn, all at 1 km to go; amazingly all made it through upright.) And when the race used to finish in Milan, there was routine criticism of how the final circuit used unsafe transitions of tramway tracks.
Multiple teams criticized the course ahead of Thursday’s stage. Visma-Lease a Bike director Marc Reef said the organizers were “really looking for trouble.” Soudal-Quick Step’s Jasper Stuyven offered a prescient warning: “If it rains, it’s not going to be funny,” he said. In a darkly ironic moment, it was Unibet coach Marcel Kittel who offered a (slightly) opposing view: While highlighting the “unusual” finish, he said. “Our goal has always been to build our lead-out train in such a way that we can deliver in finishes like this too. That’s our focus, and we’ll be ready for it. This finish cannot be an excuse.”
While in Stuyven’s view, riders carry some portion of the responsibility, in mine the majority of it lies instead with promoter RCS. And we’re not done with this sort of thing at this race. Another challenging finish looms on stage 18, which features a 90° corner at 300 meters to go and a bend in the road at 100 meters that seems tailormade for controversy around sprinters holding lines on a non-straight finale. It’s worth asking: Is this the kind of spectacle the Giro wants?
On a day that everyone knew would be a sprint finish, Elmar Reinders was in position to set up sprinter Dylan Groenewegen for a win. Groenewegen was on a bit of a hot streak in spring, with three straight wins in March including the WorldTour-level Ronde Van Brugge before fading in April. His Unibet-Rose Rockets team missed out on a coveted Tour de France invite but scored one to the Giro, and so far the sprint-focused team had come up short.
The finale was tricky, with cobblestones and a pair of sharp corners at 400 meters to go. Doubtless the message for the sprinters’ teams went out in unison in morning meetings: Positioning would be vital. As the race wound down in its final kilometers, Soudal-Quick Step, Lidl-Trek, Decathlon-CMA CGM and Unibet jostled for position at the front. Unibet was particularly visible, and Matyáš Kopecký ably hit the front at the crucial moment, Reinders and Groenewegen locked on his wheel, and then dropped them off just past the corner as the race hit the cobbles. It was all coming together.
Then, disaster struck.
Did we do a good job with this story?