{"id":107607,"date":"2025-09-01T20:07:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T20:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/107607\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T20:07:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T20:07:13","slug":"maybe-it-was-a-mistake-to-follow-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/107607\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe it was a mistake to follow him"},"content":{"rendered":"

Things were looking bright for Giulio Ciccone<\/a> on Sunday afternoon, when the Italian rider from Lidl-Trek<\/a> was the only one able to keep up with a sprint by eventual winner<\/a> Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> (Visma | Lease a Bike) in stage nine of the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a<\/a>. The veteran from Chieti tried, but ultimately lost his bet. Was he a bit too ambitious? Let’s hear what he had to say….<\/p>\n

It was Ciccone who came closest to Vingegaard on day two of this Tour of Spain. In fact, the Italian was only narrowly beaten by the Dane at the first mountain finish. On day five, Lidl-Trek finished third in the team time trial, although this saw Ciccone drop from third to fifth place in the GC.<\/p>\n

Then, on day six, a few breakaway riders overtook the GC contenders, causing Ciccone to drop to seventh place for a day. A day later, there was another mountain finish, and once again the experienced Italian was able to keep up with the best. Ciccone started stage nine showing no signs of weakness.<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"giulio-ciccone\"\/<\/p>\n

Giulio Ciccone<\/p>\n

“It went too hard for me,” said an honest Ciccone<\/p>\n

Even when Vingegaard, after a good lead-out from Matteo Jorgenson, took off, Ciccone seemed to be able to keep up again. The Italian was the only one who immediately locked onto the Dane’s wheel, but not much later Ciccone had to give up. The Lidl-Trek rider dug too deep, although he did finish in the same time as most of the GC contenders.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he just went too fast,\u201d Ciccone laughed afterwards. \u201cIt went too hard for me. I really did my best, but maybe it was a mistake to follow him,\u201d the Italian questioned his choice in the mixed zone. \u201cMaybe it would have been better to set the pace at the foot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, there was also a sense of positivity heading into the rest day. \u201cThe feeling was good. We really had the confidence to try it in this stage. That’s just the way it is. Sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it doesn’t. Today Jonas was super strong. We will definitely try again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Things were looking bright for Giulio Ciccone on Sunday afternoon, when the Italian rider from Lidl-Trek was the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-107607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}