Lorena Wiebes was disqualified from the women’s Giro d’Italia for a bike weight violation, just hours after winning the opening stage.<\/p>\n
The Dutchwoman, riding for Team SD Worx-Protime, had sealed the first maglia rosa – the leader’s pink jersey – of this year’s race by pipping Italian Elisa Balsamo and Irish rider Lara Gillespie to the finish line in Ravenna.<\/p>\n
But in a statement on Saturday night, race organisers said 27-year-old Wiebes, who won the Giro points classification in 2025, had been kicked out of the race for “use of a bicycle not in compliance with the regulations, specifically failing to meet the minimum weight requirements”.<\/p>\n
Lidl-Trek’s Balsamo was awarded the stage win and will start Sunday’s second stage in the maglia rosa. <\/p>\n
Canyon-Sram rider Chiara Consonni was bumped up on to the podium behind Gillespie.<\/p>\n
Balsamo said: “Of course, it is not the way I want to win but this is a decision of the jury. <\/p>\n
“In any case, it’s an honour to wear the maglia rosa and I am looking forward to trying to defend it in tomorrow’s stage.”<\/p>\n
The 139km opening stage from Cesenatico, which ended with three laps of a 13.2km city circuit, featured multiple crashes.<\/p>\n
Those included one after just 35km, as a result of which Movistar’s British rider Cat Ferguson was forced to abandon the race. <\/p>\n
Her team later said the 20-year-old, making her Giro debut, had been taken to hospital for medical evaluation.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s second stage – 156km between Roncade and Caorle – will again suit the sprinters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lorena Wiebes was disqualified from the women’s Giro d’Italia for a bike weight violation, just hours after winning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-475272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}