{"id":189014,"date":"2025-10-09T21:40:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T21:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/189014\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T21:40:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T21:40:12","slug":"i-felt-really-good-until-the-final-time-up-the-climb-defending-champion-neilson-powless-settles-for-seventh-at-gran-piemonte-ahead-of-il-lombardia-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/189014\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I felt really good until the final time up the climb’ \u2013 Defending champion Neilson Powless settles for seventh at Gran Piemonte ahead of Il Lombardia bid"},"content":{"rendered":"

2024 Gran Piemonte champion Neilson Powless<\/a> couldn’t repeat the feat on the road to Acqui Terme on Thursday afternoon, instead settling for seventh place in the chasing group 1:07 down on solo winner Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).<\/p>\n

The US racer is building up to challenge at the final Monument of the season, Il Lombardia<\/a>, this weekend. His last tuneup before heading to Como on Saturday was the hilly 179km run across Piemonte, which he won last autumn with a 42km solo ride.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This year, the 29-year-old EF Education-EasyPost<\/a> rider was once again in the mix, battling with the strongest riders on the penultimate ascent of the race, the 6.1km 5.2% Casteletto d’Erro, at 47km from the finish.<\/p>\n

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However, on the final, decisive run up the climb, Powless \u2013 and the rest of the favourites in the peloton \u2013 had no answer as Del Toro mounted his race-winning attack 19.7km from the line.<\/p>\n

Speaking to CyclingPro<\/a> after the finish, Powless said that he felt good during the race, but had left too much on the road to be able to react at the decisive moment.<\/p>\n

“I think I was a little bit out of depth today,” Powless said. “I felt really good until the final time up the climb. I could feel that my legs didn’t recover super well from the first time up the circuit climb when I was trying to mark Del Toro.<\/p>\n

“I was a little bit too excited, maybe. You also just can’t let him go, so\u2026”<\/p>\n

Powless has several one-day race victories on his palmar\u00e8s alongside last year’s Gran Piemonte, including Dwars door Vlaanderen,<\/a> the Donostia San Sebasti\u00e1n Klasikoa, and two editions of the Japan Cup.<\/p>\n

He’ll now look ahead to the next one-day challenge, the 238km Il Lombardia, where he finished a career-best eighth last year. Powless concluded that he wasn’t upset with how his day at Gran Piemonte<\/a> had gone, rather he hoped that the race would give him the last bit of preparation he needed to challenge at the Classic of the Falling Leaves.<\/p>\n

“I don’t really think I made a bad decision today, but I just really needed a little bit more depth in the end,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I was feeling really good all day today, but just didn’t recover super well from the second-to-last effort.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully, it gave me what I needed for Il Lombardia because that’s another beast.”<\/p>\n

Neilson Powless – Interview at the finish – Gran Piemonte 2025 – YouTube
\n\"Neilson<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2024 Gran Piemonte champion Neilson Powless couldn’t repeat the feat on the road to Acqui Terme on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-189014","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\/189014","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=189014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}