{"id":698440,"date":"2026-05-28T02:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T02:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/698440\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T02:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T02:46:12","slug":"giro-ditalia-stage-17-valgren-blasts-to-emotional-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/698440\/","title":{"rendered":"Giro d’Italia Stage 17: Valgren Blasts to Emotional Win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Danish veteran scores biggest victory since a devastating crash that nearly ended his career and saves the Giro for EF Education-EasyPost.<\/p>\n

Listen to this articleListen\"Valgren<\/p>\n

(Photo: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images))<\/p>\n

Updated May 27, 2026 10:24AM<\/p>\n

Michael Valgren<\/a> powered to the most significant win of his long career Wednesday at the Giro d\u2019Italia.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Danish veteran emerged out of a hot mess of breakaway attacks on stage 17 to take his biggest victory since his career nearly ended in 2022.<\/p>\n

Valgren destroyed his hip and pelvis in a terrible crash at the Route d\u2019Occitanie and spent close to a year on the sidelines.<\/p>\n

His injuries were so severe that he chose to ride with the EF devo team through 2023 to race himself back to full fitness and confidence.<\/p>\n

The 34-year-old said at the finish Wednesday a first grand tour win was the missing part of a small but stellar palmar\u00e8s that includes victotries at Amstel Gold Race and Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.<\/p>\n

\u201cI missed this on my resume. I think I deserve this,\u201d Valgren said. \u201cMy career is pretty good but I needed this grand tour stage win. Luckily it came today.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was also a crucial win for EF Education-EasyPost on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The U.S.-based team has been out of the picture all through the season and barely factored in this Giro d\u2019Italia.<\/p>\n

This was just the third win of the season for Jonathan Vaughters\u2019 WorldTour team.<\/p>\n

Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X Mobility) and Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious) came to the line second and third in Andalo after Valgren launched an all-out attack from the break<\/a> with one kilometer to go.<\/p>\n

Valgren waved a green Pok\u00e9mon card in defiance as he crossed the line on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year I had high hopes for a good stage in the Tour so my son gave me a Pok\u00e9mon in our team colors,\u201d Valgren said in his winner\u2019s interview. \u201cThis is my lucky charm.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

No problems for Vingegaard in day for the Danes<\/p>\n

Race-leader Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> enjoyed an armchair ride on stage 17 ahead of two huge days in the mountains on Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n

Visma-Lease a Bike controlled the peloton all day and kept Vingegaard and his closest rivals together before they crossed the line as one, 5 minutes back on Valgren.<\/p>\n

There were no significant changes in classification in what was an informal day off for the GC racers.<\/p>\n

Valgren doesn\u2019t miss in one of last chances for the break
\n\"ValgrenValgren dug deep in the final to hold on to a series of attacks from Rubio.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s grueling 202km stage went uphill nearly all day and sneakily amassed 3,300 meters of elevation gain despite the lack of any single severe climb.<\/p>\n

It was a parcours built perfectly for the break \u2013 and the attackers took note.<\/p>\n

This 17th stage might be their last chance at a stage-win before they stop their head units Sunday in Rome.<\/p>\n

The fight for the break was predictably fierce.<\/p>\n

It took around two hours of relentless racing before two large groups came together.<\/p>\n

All the usual suspects were in what worked out to be the stage\u2019s winning move. Valgren joined top attackers like Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Jhonatan Narv\u00e1ez, and Igor Arrieta (both UAE Emirates-XRG) in the 29-rider attack.<\/p>\n

The break took more than 5 minutes of a gap as Visma-Lease a Bike shut down the race.<\/p>\n

The long, grueling stage entered its endgame at around 40km to go when the break split into two groups on a short ramp.<\/p>\n

Pre-stage favorite Narv\u00e1ez was caught in the group behind and attacked relentlessly to try to bridge across as he hunted a fourth stage win.<\/p>\n

But the lead split of 9 had other plans.<\/p>\n

Caruso, Arrieta, and Einer Rubio (Movistar) piled on with a flurry of attacks that helped keep the group clear.<\/p>\n

Valgren fends off bonk for first grand tour win<\/p>\n

Rubio finally got away with Valgren on his wheel at 15km to go and it looked like the stage would come down to a sprint a deux.<\/p>\n

But the attack faltered as Valgren leaned on Rubio to do the work.<\/p>\n

The Dane looked like he didn\u2019t have the legs to land it, and four riders came across.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was super hard, I was really on my limit, and I didn\u2019t have any food for a while because the cars were really behind us,\u201d Valgren said. \u201cI was worried I was going to bonk. Luckily the stage was not 500 metres longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valgren didn\u2019t wait when the group came back together.<\/p>\n

He exploded out off the front inside the final kilometer and had time in the final 50 meters to fish the lucky Pok\u00e9mon out of his pocket.<\/p>\n

Giro d\u2019Italia stage 17 results<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Danish veteran scores biggest victory since a devastating crash that nearly ended his career and saves the Giro…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[168574,49,48,635,54263,82,102249,62506,181963,57421,254548,54267],"class_list":["post-698440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-audio-true","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-parent_category-road","tag-sports","tag-tag-giro-ditalia","tag-tag-giulio-ciccone","tag-tag-jhonatan-narvaez","tag-tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-tag-michael-valgren","tag-type-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}