Giro d'Italia 2025 Debrief: Breaking Down Exactly How & Where Simon Yates Won the Race

Diving deep into how Simon Yates both laid the foundations for and executed a stunning come-from-behind Giro victory

Thank you for reading the daily BTP coverage of the 2025 Giro d'Italia. This coverage was only possible thanks to all BTP readers, particularly premium subscribers. I will take a short break but will return for coverage of the final stages of the Critérium du Dauphiné.

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After taking a few days to ponder Simon Yates’ astonishing turnaround at the 2025 Giro d’Italia, one that joins the Giro’s growing list of dramatic GC reversals as one of the most exciting Grand Tour comebacks in recent years, I wanted to take a step back and understand exactly where and how Yates pulled off such an unexpected victory.

While the obvious answer would be his incredible ride on Stage 20’s brutal ascent of the Finestre to ride clear of Richard Carapaz and Isaac del Toro, if we look deeper, we can see that the foundation for Yates's win was laid well before he surged clear on one of the hardest climbs in professional cycling, leaving his two biggest rivals in a mental pretzel, unable to respond for fear of assisting the other.

Final GC Top Ten:
1) Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) +0
2) Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +3:56
3) Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) +4:43
4) Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) +6:23
5) Damiano Caruso (Bahrain-Victorious) +7:32
6) Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +9:28
7) Egan Bernal (INEOS Grenadiers) +12:42
8) Einer Rubio (Movistar) +13:05
9) Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +13:36
10) Michael Storer (Tudor Pro Cycling) +14:27

Points Jersey Top Three
1) Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) - 295 points
2) Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike) - 185 points
3) Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) - 127 points

Mountains Jersey Top Three
1) Lorenzo Fortunato (XDS Astana) - 355 points
2) Christian Scaroni (XDS Astana) - 201 points
3) Nicolas Prodhomme (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) - 107 points

White (Youth) Jersey Top Three
1) Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +0
2) Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +5:32
3) Max Poole (Picnic PostNL) +14:19

To help us digest the final result and attempt to understand what exactly happened and where mistakes/winning moves were made, I’ve isolated every stage where the top three won/lost time relative to each other and how much time they won(+) or lost(-).

Where Time Was Won or Lost

• Stage 2 Time Trial
  Isaac del Toro +0
  Simon Yates -16
  Richard Carapaz -21

• Stage 4 Sprint Stage
  Isaac del Toro +0
  Richard Carapaz -4
  Simon Yates -4

• Stage 7 Summit Finish
  Isaac del Toro +0
  Richard Carapaz -6
  Simon Yates -10

• Stage 9 Gravel
  Isaac del Toro +0
  Richard Carapaz -1:10
  Simon Yates -1:12

• Stage 10 Individual Time Trial
  Simon Yates +0
  Isaac Del Toro -39
  Richard Carapaz −1:08

• Stage 11 Mountain Stage
  Richard Carapaz +0
  Isaac Del Toro -14
  Simon Yates -20

• Stage 12 Sprint Stage
  Isaac Del Toro +0
  Richard Carapaz -2
  Simon Yates -2

• Stage 13 Hilly Stage

  Isaac Del Toro +0
  Richard Carapaz -9
  Simon Yates -9

• Stage 16 Summit Finish
  Richard Carapaz +0
  Simon Yates -42
  Isaac del Toro -1:36

• Stage 17 Mountain Stage
  Isaac del Toro +0
  Richard Carapaz -10
  Simon Yates -25

• Stage 19 Mountain Stage
  Isaac del Toro +0
  Richard Carapaz -2
  Simon Yates -30

• Stage 20 Mountain Stage
  Simon Yates +0
  Isaac del Toro -5’17
  Richard Carapaz -5’21

When the Top Three Won or Lost Time Relative to Simon Yates

When looking at the above graph, we can immediately see Simon Yates’ remarkable comeback on race leader Isaac del Toro. Despite only taking time on Del Toro on three stages (while losing time on nine stages), he ended up with a blowout overall victory. And, while the tally between Carapaz and Yates was slightly closer (6v3), before Stage 20, the only occurrence where Yates had taken time back on Carapaz was the race’s two time trials, and had lost time on the four previous mountain stages.

• Interestingly, if we look at week-by-week time breakdown, we see that the actual volume of the time Yates’ rivals gained on him wasn’t massive, and potentially foretold this comeback. Outside of the first week, neither Del Toro nor Carapaz took net time on him through the last two weeks, with Carapaz entirely unable to consistently stack multiple significant time gains against Yates. Essentially, Yates stayed just close enough to the lead, but just far enough back to be out of UAE’s mind, and out of crash trouble, that he was primed to strike when the parcours suited him.

  • Week 1 (Stages 1-9)
    Del Toro +1:42 (gained)
    Carapaz +1 (gained)

  • Week 2 (Stages 10-15)
    Del Toro -22 (lost)
    Carapaz -48 (lost)

  • Week 3 (Stages 16-21)
    Carapaz -3:56 (lost)
    Del Toro -5:16 (lost)

Course Type Where Time Was Won or Lost Relative to Simon Yates

Flat to Rolling Stages
Isaac Del Toro +1:03
Richard Carapaz +2
Simon Yates +0

• Stage 9
  Isaac del Toro +1:00
  Carapaz +2
  Simon Yates +0

Time Bonuses
Isaac Del Toro +48
Richard Carapaz +14
Simon Yates +0

Mountain Stages
Simon Yates +0
Richard Carapaz -3:46
Isaac Del Toro -5:24

Time Trials
Simon Yates +0
Isaac Del Toro -23
Richard Carapaz −1:13

When examining the course types where the other major GC riders gained or lost time relative to Simon Yates, unlike Tadej Pogačar’s recent wins at the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France, we do not see a clear picture of cross-terrain dominance.

• The thing that sticks out the most is that Yates surrendered ground in time bonuses and nearly every individual mountain stage battle, he won the war due to his Stage 20 assault, signaling incredible form.

  • But if Stage 20 was his knockout blow, he put himself in a position to win by gaining ground in time trials even before he launched his winning move on Stage 20.

    • This fact will be completely forgotten due to the drama and poetry of Stage 20, but time trials were once again key to a Grand Tour win (if Yates doesn’t TT well, he isn’t close enough to cause Del Toro and Carapaz to lose hope over the top of the climb and meltdown in the valley).

Five Key Takeaways

1) Simon Yates Didn’t Win Everywhere, Just When It Mattered Most: What makes Yates’ victory so unique in modern cycling is that he didn’t even come close to dominating across every type of terrain, losing time to both Isaac del Toro and Richard Carapaz on nine stages and only gaining time on three. But two of those three came in the time trials, and the final one was Stage 20, where he dropped both rivals by over five minutes on the Colle delle Finestre. This wasn’t a Pogačar-style domination; it was tactical patience, paired with a killer instinct, and an uncanny ability to stay off the ground as nearly every other pre-race favorite was taken down by crashes.

• In other words, his Giro wasn’t about steady gains, it was about absorbing damage, staying healthy, then detonating a single tactical bomb that decided the race. Across almost every mountain stage (Stages 7, 11, 16, 17, 19), Yates was outperformed repeatedly, losing time on every mountain stage leading into Stage 20.

  • But because his rivals didn’t, or weren’t able to, stick the knife in during these vulnerable moments, Yates was able to go for broke on the hardest climb of the race (and the one that suited him the most), allowing him to flip the script and deliver one of the most dramatic single-stage GC swings in recent memory. Despite losing time on the more explosive climbs to Carapaz, Yates delivered a phenomenal hour-long climbing effort on the Finestre.

• Also, if we go back through the stages, we can see that Yates laid the crucial groundwork for this win in the time trials, where he took a cumulative 23 seconds on Del Toro and 1:13 on Carapaz, which kept him close enough that he could create chaos behind after getting a relatively mild gap over the top of the Finestre.

  • Conversely, his time losses elsewhere gave him just enough freedom to get the initial gap on the Finestre. In effect, this kept him just close enough to take over the race with a single attack on Stage 20, but far enough away from the race lead that UAE management didn’t even seem to fully grasp the danger of Yates riding clear (as evidenced by the fact that they only told him to consider chasing once on the Finestre), until it was far too late and he was in the slipstream of a hammering Wout van Aert.

2) The Heavily Backloaded Course Design Highlighted Simon Yates’ Strengths: One of the biggest keys of this Giro is that the somewhat strange course design, where there were no real mountain stages through the first two weeks, allowed Yates to avoid an off day early in the race, which has taken him out of the GC in multiple previous Grand Tour attempts, before he even has a chance to leverage his incredible climbing skills.

• By delaying the high mountains until the last possible moment, there were few chances for Simon Yates’ GC rivals to capitalize on his early climbing struggles.

• It also played perfectly to his strengths, since, while he can struggle with consistency over a full three weeks, he is an elite pure climber capable of producing sustained watts per kilos for an hour that others cannot.

• The odd route means that we will never know, but it does feel like UAE and Del Toro missed an opportunity to pile even more time on Simon Yates earlier in the race.

  • For example, Del Toro distanced Yates on the first uphill finish, back on Stage 7, and Yates seemed to struggle to keep pace on the San Pellegrino climb on Stage 11, but with UAE still focused on Juan Ayuso, they weren’t

  • And, when Del Toro got clear on Stage 15 after marking Richard Carapaz, Simon Yates was in the group behind, but was paced back on by Del Toro’s UAE team. It was a long way from the finish line, but it is possible Yates could have struggled to close down this move, and it would have been best practice to at least make him burn energy closing it down himself, or make the risky decision to let Del Toro ride clear.

    • While UAE had valid reasons for not attempting to pile time gains on Simon Yates earlier in the race, these little missteps, including letting Van Aert get a large enough gap to get up and over the Finestre, were due to the simple fact that they didn’t consider Yates a threat until it was far too late.

3) Despite an Incredibly Talented Roster, UAE’s Race Strategy Continues to Leave Something to be Desired: For all the firepower UAE brought to this Giro; a young phenom in Del Toro, elite support riders like Adam Yates and Brandon McNulty, and numerical superiority in the mountains, the team failed to manage the final week with the decisiveness required to close out a Grand Tour.

• For the first 2.5 weeks of this Giro, Del Toro was far and away the best rider in the race, gaining 1:42 on Yates in Week 1 and holding his lead through most of the second week.

  • But this was done on mostly rolling, explosive terrain, and when it came to true GC-defining efforts, time trials, and decisive climbs, he showed softness early on. And, with the high mountains crammed into the final few stages, this was always going to be a major issue, and losing 5:17 to Yates in a single late mountain stage only confirmed what many suspected would happen.

• The most shocking thing about Del Toro’s loss wasn’t that it was a simple physical collapse, like Tom Dumoulin at the 2015 Vuelta or Simon Yates at the 2018 Giro, but almost a purely strategic one.

  • In fact, the moment UAE failed to shut down Van Aert as he built up a massive gap in the breakaway early on Stage 20, the race was over. With such a big engine up the road, even if Yates had crested the Finestre with just a 20 or 30-second gap, Del Toro and Carapaz were never going to be able to keep Van Aert from blowing the gap out.

    • Assuming UAE didn’t have the legs to get a rider in the breakaway with him to drop back and pace Del Toro after the climb, they should still have put their team on the front and paced to keep the breakaway’s gap under six or seven minutes by the bottom of the climb.

      • This would have ensured that Van Aert would have been caught and dropped on the climb, and so if Yates pulled out any sort of gap, or Del Toro was dropped, on the day’s biggest climb, they wouldn’t lose the race lead.

  • But, even after it became clear Van Aert’s presence up the road would be a problem, the fact that the team car didn’t immediately press Del Toro to begin working with Carapaz, even if it carried a risk, to ensure Yates didn’t crest the summit with a gap, sealed their fate.

4) The Gravel on Stage 9 Fundamentally Shaped The Overall Battle: One interesting counterfactual to consider is that without the Stage 9 crash-caused split, this is a wildly different race. After all, had Isaac del Toro not gained over a minute on Richard Carapaz over the gravel on Stage 9, EF, not UAE, would have been in the race lead and tasked with controlling their GC rivals heading into Stage 20.

• If EF had been in the race lead heading into Stage 20, it would have caused them to race far more conservatively on the approach to the Finestre and would have kept Carapaz from going into the red so early in the climb. This likely would have allowed him to ride a faster overall time, which, in turn, would have seen him drop Del Toro and stay close enough to Yates to win the overall.

  • Also, it likely would have forced Del Toro to race with more aggressive and less “afraid to lose” energy on Stage 20, which could have actually made him more difficult to drop since he wouldn’t have been solely focused on Carapaz.

5) The Hard Numbers From This Giro d’Italia Tell Us That We Shouldn’t Expect to See Any of These GC Leaders Contending at the Upcoming Tour de France: Yates’ climbing performance on the Finestre, whose consistently steep 9% gradient, and long 18.5 kilometer length, means it takes nearly twice as long as most “long” climbs in professional cycling, was incredibly impressive, especially when we consider that it came three weeks into a Grand Tour, and was at a higher elevation and on a longer climb than Tadej Pogačar’s solo ride on Stage 20 of last year’s race.

• Simon Yates Giro 2025 Stage 20 Finestre:
  Time: 59:22
  Power: 6.2 w/kg (360 estimated watts)
  VAM: 1688 (vertical meters gained per hour)
  Highest Elevation: 2,100m (7,000ft)

• Pogačar Giro 2024 Stage 20 Monte Grappa
  Duration: 45:00
  Power: 6.4w/kg (418 estimated watts)
  VAM: 1700 (vertical meters gained per hour)
  Highest Elevation: 1,775m (5,823 feet)

  • Before we pencil in Simon Yates as a Tour de France contender, we should remember that the level is simply higher at the Tour.

    • For example, on Stage 15 of the 2024 Tour, Pogačar rode four climbs at nearly 6w/kilogram before averaging close to 7 watts per kilogram for the 40-minute final run up Plateau de Beille.

      • Stage 15 2024 Tour de France Plateau de Beille
        Duration: 39:50
        Power: 6.98w/kg (447 estimated watts)
        VAM: 1887
        Highest Elevation: 1,790m (5,870 ft)

• The fact that these hard metrics show us just how below the top contenders at the biggest event should also tell us that while it was great to see Richard Carapaz continue his climb back onto a Grand Tour overall podium (for the first time since 2022), and Derek Gee finishing a career-best 4th, that the two biggest pre-race contenders, Juan Ayuso and Primož Roglič, left the race due to crash complications, and there is still a large delta to bridge before any of these riders could be an overall force at a fully stacked Tour de France.

  • On the other hand, it does highlight there is still opportunity for teams with proven, but not top tier, GC contenders if the chips fall right.

    • After all, with Simon Yates’ win meaning 12 out of the last 16 Grand Tours have been won by riders with multiple Grand Tour wins (and just five riders taking those 12 wins) it is more clear than ever that there are a finite number of riders with the physical capabilities to win these races, and, if you have one on your team, you have a chance.

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