The stunning Giro d’Italia pink jersey reversal will go down as one of the most amazing raids in cycling history, and rightly so.
For me, this spectacular, last-chance Simon Yates coup orchestrated by Visma-Lease a Bike reconfirmed two things.
First, that Visma-Lease a Bike is the peloton’s only true “super team.”
That moniker is being tossed around a lot these days. UAE Team Emirates-XRG has the budget. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe brings the branding muscle. Lidl-Trek is coming on fast, and Ineos Grenadiers is clinging to relevance.
But in terms of tactical execution, back-room nutritional and training know-how, and above-the-title stars willing to bury themselves for the collective good, only Visma truly fits the “super team” bill.
Second, and perhaps most importantly, this Giro reconfirmed the notion that a grand tour — to truly deliver the spectacle that fans, tifosi, sponsors, teams, and even the riders themselves crave — needs to bring the peloton to its collective knees.
Also read: Inside Visma’s tactical masterpiece
People will spend weeks dissecting how Isaac del Toro and Richard Carapaz froze as Yates sailed away up the Finestre. But that paralysis — those blank stares and broken spirits — only happens when the race has reached the breaking point deep into a third brutal and unrelenting third week.
Shorter stage races don’t get you there. This Giro did.
There’s a never-ending debate about remaking the racing calendar to bring the sport closer to an audience that’s been weaned on 15-second Instagram reels. Some pundits say today’s fans crave more easily digestible, packed-in action that three weeks of grinding hell cannot deliver.
No, we don’t need fan-friendly finishing circuits or pre-fab, made-for-TV romps with the stars.
What we need is more slow-food deliciousness like this Giro.
Let’s dive in:
To produce gems, grand tours must remain cruel
When Yates attacked on the Colle delle Finestre, dropped the pink jersey, and turned the Giro on its head, it wasn’t just a tactical masterpiece.
It was also a reminder that for a grand tour to deliver gut-punch drama and raw human emotion it must first drive the peloton to the absolute brink.
Bike racing and grand tours were built upon the foundation of pain, sacrifice, perseverance, and pushing the limits of human performance against nature.
Those are the qualities that have carried the sport into its second century. Of course, long gone are the days of wool jerseys, steel-framed bikes, and gravel roads (well, sort of), but grand tour racing is — at its essence — a throwback to misery and a celebration of controlled suffering.
Also read: A finale for the ages
Sure, today’s peloton might be carbo-loaded, high-cadence watt machines that can turn Europe’s mightiest mountains into sprint farms, but the third week of a grand tour is the figurative straw that can break the camel’s collective back.
Grand tours are cycling’s greatest and cruelest iterations of its merciless class system. Deep into a grand tour, there is no hiding, no pretending, and no room for error or misjudgment.
This Giro reconfirmed the notion that the best of what cycling can offer is only realized when the peloton is ground down to its collective knees.
So much happened today, but this has to be one of biggest highlights of the day… Wout van Aert almost fell off the bike after finishing the pull for the Giro winner Simon Yates.
: Adam Blythe #GirodItalia pic.twitter.com/ImLoF94ZgS
— Lukáš Ronald Lukács (@lucasaganronald) May 31, 2025
Yates and V-Lab’s raid wasn’t some lark. The team started building this in December. In January, Yates told me and a handful of journalists at the team camp that he had a big circle around the Finestre stage. He knew then that the penultimate stage would decide everything.
There is an ongoing debate among some “experts” and armchair sports directors that grand tour racing is a relic of the past, a hostage to its own traditions, and that grand tours are out of touch with today’s thrill-a-minute audience.
Twenty-one stages of racing can seem eternal, but it’s only during the final epic throes in the third week of grand tours — much like the magical sixth hour of the monuments — when the physical and mental stress, fatigue, desolation, and exhaustion can produce these history-making reversals.
Yes, to get there, you have to be patient, endure long interminable kilometers, and maybe even fall asleep during some of the stages, but when the explosion happens, it’s worth the long wait.
When Yates attacked on the Finestre, he was exorcising a career’s worth of disappointment, frustration, and near-misses, and pouring his absolute mind, body, and soul into the pedals.
That only happens when a grand tour pushes every rider and every team to the absolute depths of misery, pain, and suffering.
Visma-Lease a Bike, take a bow
Visma-Lease a Bike won the Giro in such a spectacular way that it now stands alone as the best team in elite men’s racing.
In my book, the team is deeper, better coached, and races more efficiently and unselfishly than any squad in the elite men’s peloton.
UAE Emirates-XRG might have deeper pockets and, on paper, pack even better riders, but this Giro proved that Visma is a class of its own.
Tadej Pogačar is, without question, the greatest racer in modern cycling. And UAE is both smart and lucky about how it handles him.
When Pogačar is in the race, UAE doesn’t need tactics.
It’s much like Pep Guardiola once said about managing Lionel Messi when they were together at FC Barcelona; just keep him safe, feed him the ball as much as possible, and let him be Messi.
That Pogi playbook doesn’t work for UAE when the Slovenian superstar is not in the race.
UAE was caught flat-footed in this Giro. Sure, losing Jay Vine and Juan Ayuso to injury was a major setback Saturday, but the team was out-raced on the Finestre by Visma with a superior game plan, race vision, and execution.
This Giro victory is not only huge for Yates — a long overdue validation that his 2018 Vuelta a España crown was not a one-off — but it is equally massive for Visma.
Also read: The stats, PBs, and records
The team’s been crippled by crashes and injuries since the end of its magical 2023 season, when it made history by sweeping all three grand tours with three riders in the same season. No team in history — not even the famed Renault team in the early 1980s with Hinault, LeMond and Fignon — could pull that off.
Last year was rough on the proud Killer Bees.
King bee Primoz Roglič jettisoned to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Wout Van Aert suffered two devastating crashes, and only a breakout year from Matteo Jorgenson and a miracle comeback from Jonas Vingegaard from his horrific spill at Iztulia Basque Country to win a stage and finish second at the Tour took some of the sting out of what was an otherwise black 2024.
Wout at the peak of his powers
Having set all-time 10min power PB earlier in the Giro d’Italia – 518w – he posted another lifetime best on the Colle delle Finestre on Stage 20 to ensure he could help Simon Yates in the next valley along.
️ Cycling Weekly
Sprint Cycling pic.twitter.com/OvrhiWgSrf— Velon CC (@VelonCC) June 3, 2025
With Pogačar stampeding to the Giro-Tour double and the “Triple Crown” sweep, some were quick to write off Visma.
But the proud unit roared back, proving that smart tactics, patient application of principles, and the unselfish commitment to an entire team toward a larger goal will ultimately win races.
Saturday’s Finestre raid was a similar replay to how the team clipped the wings of Pogačar in the 2022 Tour de France high on the Col du Galibier. Though set in dramatically different circumstances — it also came late in the grand tour — these rare but spectacular raids prove that tactics remain central even in cycling’s power-meter era.
Van Aert was the catalyst and motor in both historic raids.
What he did Saturday — infiltrating the day’s breakaway, holding on over the Finestre to be up the road for his attacking captain, and then pacing Yates to the base of the final climb — was both textbook and mind-blowing at the same time.
That not only takes tremendous strength and firepower, but also huge amounts of self-discipline, sacrifice, and devotion to the team.
There are many World No. 1 riders — without naming names — who you never see doing this. Yes, Wout is God.
Buckle up for the Tour de France
Visma is back, and this Giro victory will pulse across the organization as it prepares for what should be an equally epic clash between Pogačar and Vingegaard at the Tour de France next month.
Visma-Lease a Bike has continually impressed with how it manages its riders, how it deploys tactics, and how the team uses its strength in numbers to its advantage. Many teams also pack big stars and firepower, but rarely deliver.
This Giro will give them wings in July.
With Yates’ victory, the modern iteration of Visma now boasts eight grand tour crowns with four riders (3 Vuelta, 1 Giro with Roglič, 2 Tours with Vingegaard, 1 Vuelta with Sepp Kuss, 1 Giro with Yates).
Also read: What happened to Del Toro and Carapaz?
The only team better in this century is Team Sky/Ineos, which has won 12 grand tours with five riders (1 Tour with Bradley Wiggins, 4 Tours, 2 Vueltas, 1 Giro with Chris Froome, 1 Tour with Geraint Thomas, 1 Giro, 1 Tour with Egan Bernal, and 1 Giro with Tao Geoghegan Hart).
Giro d’Italia 2025 (Simon Yates) is the first GrandTour victory for Team Visma | Lease a Bike without Sepp Kuss in the team.
Kuss in TVL GrandTour history:
✅Vuelta’19
✅Vuelta’20
✅Vuelta’21
✅Tour’22
✅Giro’23
✅Tour’23
✅Vuelta’23
❌Giro’25— Cycling Statistics (@StatsOnCycling) June 3, 2025
UAE, in contrast, is a support crew built around cycling’s “Superman,” with four grand tour victories — three yellow jerseys and one pink — with Pogačar.
What does that reveal?
It shows that Visma is a deeper and more balanced team and perhaps, more importantly, a team that knows how to play chess-like tactics to win grand tours.
This Giro was one of the ages. It didn’t start that way, but it certainly ended that way.
With the Tour de France looming and the stakes impossibly high, we might just be heading for something even bigger in a generational clash.
And only the hardest, slow-cooked grand tours can deliver up these tasty servings.