Giro d'Italia 2025 - Stage 11: Carapaz celebrates stage win as a soloist
Sebastian Lindner
· 21.05.2025
Carapaz had to wait a long time for a victory. But when he does win, it is a great success. The last time he was able to celebrate was on the 17th stage of last year's Tour de France. Then, as now, the Ecuadorian arrived as a soloist. Nobody was able to follow his attack nine kilometres before the finish when the leading group was caught. Up to the finish in Castelnovo ne' Monti, he defended ten seconds of what was once 30 seconds on the uphill finishing straight.
The small lead and the bonus seconds allowed Carapaz to climb up three positions in the overall classification to sixth place. The classification is still led by del Toro, who finished second on the day ahead of Giulio Ciccone (Lidl - Trek). Thanks to bonuses, del Toro was able to distance himself from his team-mate and captain Juan Ayuso by six seconds to 31 seconds in total.
Fortunato takes a giant leap in the battle for blue
"It's very special to win this stage of the Giro," said Carapaz at the finish. "It was really exciting today. I want to dedicate the victory to my family, especially my son, because it's his birthday today." For the 31-year-old, it was the 24th victory of his professional career.
There had been much to suggest in advance that the day would be one for the breakaway. However, the stage was so competitive that a group was only able to form just before the longest climb of the tour so far after 80 kilometres. For many non-climbers, the train had left the station. So it was the specialists around Lorenzo Fortunato (XDS Astana Team) in the mountain jersey who played the main roles. Things went particularly well for the Italian in the mountains jersey. He was able to collect plenty of points for his jersey and is now more than 100 points ahead of his first follower Ayuso. Mads Pedersen (Lidl - Trek) was also able to defend his Maglia Ciclamino.
Giro d'Italia 2025 - Results of the 11th stage
This is how the 11th stage of the Giro d'Italia 2025 went
The expected tough battle for the day's breakaway group developed right from the start. Despite numerous attacks, it took almost 80 kilometres, or one and a half hours of racing, for a group to form. By then they had already reached the foot of the climb up to San Pellegrino in Alpe (1st category). After Wout Poels (XDS Astana Team) and Wilco Kelderman (Visma | Lease a Bike) opened up a gap, a group of more than 30 riders quickly caught up with the duo. Among them: Pedersen's points jersey and the man in the climber's jersey, Fortunato, as well as the three Germans Marco Brenner, Florian Stork (both Tudor Pro Cycling Team) and Georg Steinhauser (EF Education - EasyPost).
While Fortunato then quickly went solo, the peloton wasn't far away either, UAE Emirates - XRG, not represented in the group, didn't want to let the breakaway get too far away, for a long time there was only a minute between the two parts of the race. Fortunato also only got 30 seconds away from the group. The group then completely disintegrated on the climb. Only the real experts made it to the top: Poels, Pello Bilbao (Bahrain - Victorious), Nairo Quintana (Movistar Team) and Luke Plapp (Team Jayco AlUla). And of course Fortunato, who secured 40 points for his mountains jersey.
However, the chasers only had a few seconds on the peloton, which hardly deserved the name. In fact, there was only a group of barely 15 riders around the GC favourites. However, the situation changed again on the long descent. While the four chasers caught up with Fortunato, the gap to the group of favourites, which grew back up to 60 riders, grew to more than two and a half minutes.
Breakaway riders are caught before the final climb
This did not change on the way to the second mountain classification of the day (2nd category) 40 kilometres before the finish. Fortunato secured the maximum 18 points here as well. After that, the group's lead began to shrink again, which was mainly due to the work of Lidl-Trek and Pedersen, who had also reconnected with the group around Rosa.
At the start of the last climb (2nd category), the breakaway was caught. Richard Carapaz (EF Education - EasyPost) attacked right at that moment. There were still nine kilometres to go. Although del Toro twitched briefly and called everyone else to the front, the chasers didn't really pull through. And so Carapaz had a half-minute lead at the mountain classification.
Over the remaining five kilometres, the Ecuadorian allowed his rivals to get a little closer to him. In the end, however, he finished ten seconds ahead of del Toro, who led the chasers across the line but had them well under control.
