Race Recaps

Despite a dropped chain on the final climb, Primož Roglič won both the stage 20 time trial on Monte Lussari and the Giro d'Italia 2023 in dramatic fashion. The Slovenian lost around 15 seconds due to the incident but Geraint Thomas did not have enough watts and cracked in the final part on a climb that seemed to never end for the Welshman.

The Queen stage of the Giro d'Italia 2023 featured a very difficult parcours, but the GC teams all picked a conservative strategy to wait for the final climb, with no one daring to try a mountain raid or pacing hard on the early high mountain passes. Fortunately for the interest in tomorrow's time trial, Geraint Thomas, Primož Roglič and Joao Almeida remain within a minute of each other with GC still to play for.

Geraint Thomas is defending the Maglia Rosa well, being the only rider that has not lost time on a mountain stage to his rivals Joao Almeida and Primož Roglič. Thomas finished together with Roglič, while Almeida was dropped by Sepp Kuss's acceleration on the steep Coi climb, losing 21 seconds to his main rivals.

After a big drama, the Queen stage of Giro d'Italia was shortened from 199 km to 75.0 km with the exclusion of Grand St Bernard Pass prior to the Croix de Couer, making a fairly easy day for the GC riders.

It was not the most exciting day in the Giro d'Italia first week. Surprisingly, the peloton decided to take a day off and allow one of the three breakaway riders, Davide Bais, Karel Vacek and Simone Petilli, to take a stage win on the mighty Campo Imperatore.

La Vuelta Femenina did not disappoint this weekend, with crosswind controversy on Stage 6 leading to Annemiek van Vleuten taking a healthy lead over Demi Vollering in the General Classification. Today's final stage presented Demi Vollering with an opportunity to recover that lost time on the steep slopes of Covadonga, but despite a great performance, Van Vleuten was good enough to defend her GC lead and win La Vuelta Femenina by nine seconds.

On the first mountain top finish in La Vuelta Femenina 2023, Demi Vollering, the Queen of Ardennes was unbeaten. Even Annemiek van Vleuten could not outmatch the SD Worx superstar on the Mirador de Peñas Llanas climb despite Vollering being isolated for much of the finale.

High ᵉW/Kg performances are the norm in 2023 and Tour of the Alps is not an exception despite not being a WorldTour race. Lennard Kämna won the longest mountain top finish of the week, pushing by far the best watts in his career. It was a career day for other climbers too, many of whom are at this race preparing for the Giro d'Italia.

The Tour of the Alps is the perfect preparation race before the Giro d'Italia, so the INEOS Grenadiers, down from their high altitude training camp, sent their Giro d'Italia climbing team for a tune up. Geraint Thomas, Pavel Sivakov, Laurens De Plus, Thymen Arensman, Pavel Sivakov and Tao Geoghegan Hart will all line up in Italy next month but it was unclear who the leader would be here in this mountainous .Pro race featuring Aleksandr Vlasov, Jack Haig and Hugh Carthy. In this first stage we received some answers, as the team effort of the INEOS train brought back Jack Haig before the finish and Geoghegan Hart was the man to finish the job in the last kilometre on a steep gradient.