Key Takeaways: Giro d'Italia Stage 21

Breaking down how a chaotic Grand Tour-ending final sprint was won with an impressive mix of experience and superior technical skills

Tim Merlier utilized his superior timing and technical skills to beat Jonathan Milan and win the final sprint showdown on the last day of the 2024 Giro d’Italia. Inside the final kilometer of the stage, which took place in the historic center of Rome, resplendent in its sun-soaked glory, Merlier once again proved his ability to use chaos to his advantage after weaving through a series of obstacles before ripping onto the cobblestone-covered final few hundred meters in the lead and leveraging his Classics skills to hold off Milan and Kaden Groves, who was struggling to even remain in the frame behind.

The stage served as a largely ceremonial exhibition for the non-sprinters, so the General Classification remained unchanged. Pogačar held his near-ten-minute advantage, while Dani Martínez and Geraint Thomas rounded out the final overall podium.

Stage 21 Top Five:
1) Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep) +0
2) Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) +0
3) Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) +0
4) Fernando Gaviria (Movistar) +0
5) Tim van Dijke (Visma-LAB) +0

Points Standings Top Three
1) Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) 352pts
2) Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) 225pts
3) Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep) 193pts

KOM Classification Top Three:
1) Tadej Pogačar 270pts
2) Giulio Pellizzari 206pts
3) Georg Steinhauser 153pts

Current Top Ten GC Standings:
1) Tadej Pogačar (UAE) +0
2) Dani Martínez (Bora-hansgrohe) +9’56
3) Geraint Thomas (Ineos) +10’24
4) Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R) +12’07
5) Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain) +12’49 (Youth Jersey Winner)
6) Thymen Arensman (Ineos) +14’31 (Youth second place)
7) Einer Rubio (Movistar) +15’52
8) Jan Hirt (Soudal-QuickStep) +18’05
9) Romain Bardet (dsm-firmenich PostNL) +20’32
10) Michael Storer (Tudor) +21’11

Stage 21 Race Notebook

BTP is seamlessly following every twist and turn of the 2024 Giro d’Italia with the fantastic Tour Tracker app (iPhone/Android/Web)

5.2km-to-go: After suffering an ill-timed flat/mechanical, Jonathan Milan is forced to chase back on (with the help of his team car) while the peloton is being driven along at over 60+ kilometers per hour.

3.6km: Groupama-FDJ is setting an extremely hard pace, with Tadej Pogačar right on their wheel, on the final short climb to the finish, nullifying any chance of a late attack.

2.5m: Jonathan Milan and his Lidl-Trek team have made contact with the peloton, but they still have a significant amount of ground to cover before returning to the front.

2.4km: As Pogačar attempts to take over at the front to help lead out his teammate Molano, he absorbs a big hip check from an Alpecin-Deceuninck rider, but if Pogačar weren’t as good of a bike handler as he is, we would have seen why it is a bad idea for GC contenders to mix it up in the bunch sprints.

2.1km: Pogačar quickly recovers, gets to the front, and winds up an impressive lead out.

1.7km: Lidl-Trek finally gets back to the front of the race (on the right side of the frame) and immediately takes Milan to the front of the field. At the same time, Soudal-QuickStep moves Tim Merlier up on the left side of the frame.

1.1km: Lidl-Trek has a firm hold on the front to set up Milan’s final km leadout.

200m: As Milan follows his final leadout man, Merlier, now disconnected from his team, smartly decides to jump Milan by slingshotting around his left shoulder to build up speed heading onto the cobblestones.

175m: This allows Merlier to hit the cobbles with a massive turn of speed. Milan scrambles to recover and grab his slipstream before it is too late.

150m: With Fernando Gaviria’s Movistar leadout man drifting left into his path, Merlier displays his incredible race-reading skills by passing him as closely as possible so that he will act as a screen and create space between himself and Milan.

100m: This means that by the time Milan gets by the same Movistar rider, he is out of Merlier’s slipstream, who has opened up a gap and started his sprint.

Finish: Merlier uses his Belgian background to power over the cobblestones as Milan struggles to close the gap behind. Further back, Kaden Groves comes in third at the bottom of the frame.

*All power data provided by Road Code

Key Takeaways

1) Tim Merlier Leveraged Superior Timing & Tactics to Beat a Stronger Rival: The 31-year-old Belgian once again proves that he is the king of the messy sprint by emerging from the primordial soup that was the front of the peloton in the final few hundred meters to school a likely stronger, but younger and less experienced, Jonathan Milan on pack skills and somewhat easily win the stage.

• Merlier’s presence of mind and physical bike handling skills were on full display when he jumped right to build up as much speed as possible before entering the cobblestones in the final few hundred meters.

  • Due to rougher surfaces causing the bike to leave the ground with every pedal stroke, it is more difficult to build up speed and get around riders on cobblestones. Merlier, who grew up racing on the cobblestones of Belgium, clearly knew this and used it to his advantage perfectly.

• Also, his decision and ability to weave around the Movistar leadout to create space between himself and Milan were both hugely impressive and key to his victory.

  • For example, Milan’s average power inside the final 20-seconds was ‘just’ 1,240 watts, which was far lower than Milan’s in past stages, but he didn’t need to exceed, or even match, Milan’s power due to his superior handling skills.

• After being down three wins to 1 versus Milan after Stage 13, Merlier did a fantastic job of recovering and rattling off two stage wins in the final week to pull even with the Italian.

  • This late surge is even more impressive when we consider that before this Giro, Merlier had never won a stage past the third day of a Grand Tour.

2) The Profile of Sprint Stage Winners at This Giro Differs From Recent Grand Tours: With seven sprint finishes at this Giro, Merlier, and Milan were by far the dominant forces, with three stages apiece and one going to Olav Kooij.

• With all seven stages going to riders over 1.84m (6ft), and six of them going to two riders taller than 1.88m (6ft2in) and weighing more than 76kgs (167lbs), these Giro sprints were clearly dominated by bigger, more old-school sprinters who can put out a staggering number of watts for the final twenty seconds of the race.

  • This clashes with the recent Tours de France and Vueltas a España, where lighter and more versatile sprinters Jasper Philipsen and Kaden Groves (both on Alpecin-Deceuninck) have monopolized almost all of the sprint spoils to the point where I wondered if the traditional big, fast straight-line sprinter was being marginalized.

  • A major caveat here is that Milan and Merlier, while large-framed riders, are far from one-trick pony riders due to both their great all-around riding ability and Milan's mind-blowingly good climber for his size.

• Unfortunately, with both Merlier and Milan likely to miss the Tour de France, we won’t get a chance to see how they fare against riders like Jasper Philipsen at the Tour de France, which means fitness can trump pure power due to the race featuring more demanding stages.

A full deep-dive breakdown of how the GC was won/list, along with Key Takeaways coming early next week…