{"id":688981,"date":"2026-05-23T06:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T06:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/688981\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T06:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T06:54:13","slug":"a-new-giro-starts-on-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/688981\/","title":{"rendered":"A new Giro starts on Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a few moments on the Blockhaus, it looked like Giulio Pellizzari<\/a> would go toe-to-tow with Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> for this year’s Giro d’Italia<\/a>. The young Italian followed the overwhelming race favourite during his initial attacks on the mammoth stage 7 finish as fans wondered if they were in for a thrilling GC battle.<\/p>\n

But it seemed the Red Bull – BORA Hansgrohe man rode too close to the sun, cracking in the Dane’s wheel and dropping time after his brave attempt at matching the two-time Tour de France winner. Fast forward to stage 9 and Pellizzari lost over a minute on a considerably less difficult climb to the finish.<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old arrived at the corsa rosa with grand ambitions. Many backed him to pose a considerable threat to Visma | Lease a Bike’s plans to dominate the race. That confidence is well-founded given his domination of Tour of the Alps as well as high-calibre support in Jai Hindley and Aleksandr Vlasov. But following Sunday’s finish, all didn’t seem right.<\/p>\n


\nPellizzari suffers stomach problems at GiroConfirmation soon followed that Pellizzari had been hit by a viral infection, which has also impacted several in the peloton after a turbulent first week<\/a>. Hindley and others in his team too were affected. But the young climber put in a solid time trial to ship 18 seconds to Vingegaard – who also has admitted to suffering illness problems.<\/p>\n

Ahead of stage 13, and more importantly Saturday’s imposing high mountain stage, Pellizzari seems optimistic that he can put his illness issues behind him and launch a new Giro bid. Hitting the reset button, he trails Vingegaard – who is likely to be the GC high-water mark despite Afonso Eul\u00e1lio holding the pink jersey – by 3 minutes and 9 seconds.<\/p>\n

“Wednesday was a tough day. Let’s hope we can recover a little more today and tomorrow. Then a new Giro starts on Saturday,” he told In de Leiderstrui on Thursday, sending a warning to podium contenders Vingegaard, Felix Gall and others.<\/a>“The last three days are not something I would want to relive”<\/p>\n

While the considerable gap to Vingegaard is a tall order, Pellizzari is bullish of his chances of taking home the white jersey for best young rider.<\/p>\n

When asked about the jersey, he told a reporter: “The white is definitely a target \u2014 I’m second in the young rider classification. But let’s not forget that it’s still Afonso Eul\u00e1lio who holds it. I think it’s possible; we’ll do our best for it.”<\/p>\n

Pellizzari might be looking ahead for a new Giro d’Italia dawn, but he certainly won’t be looking over his shoulder after a gruelling few days of damage limitation during illness. He hopes to have a smile behind the grimace on Saturday’s mountain test and beyond.<\/p>\n

He added: “The last three days are not something I would want to relive. But let’s talk about what’s still to come and enjoy it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a few moments on the Blockhaus, it looked like Giulio Pellizzari would go toe-to-tow with Jonas Vingegaard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,163619,173160,6495,39733,85],"class_list":["post-688981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-giro-ditalia","tag-giulio-pellizzari","tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-red-bull-bora-hansgrohe","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}