Has the Giro d’Italia lost its spark?

The opening stage of the Giro d’Italia gets underway this morning in Bulgaria and, I’ll be honest, I almost forgot it was happening.

Before you say anything, the Giro has always been my favourite grand tour. The 2010 edition – Evans’ muddy rainbow jersey, that wild breakaway to L’Aquila, Basso’s (sort of) redemption – is probably still the best race I’ve ever seen. It had everything you’d want from the ‘toughest race in the world in the world’s most beautiful place’: iconic climbs, exciting, innovative stages, and chaos. Lots of chaos.

The Giro thrives on chaos. Throughout the 2010s, the Italian grand tour proved a much-needed, exhilarating antidote to the sterile predictability of the Sky-era Tour de France.

The Tour still cast the largest shadow over the cycling during those years (it always will), but the Giro was where the real action was at: Ryder Hesjedal overhauling Purito Rodríguez on the final day, Nairo Quintana slipping away through the Stelvio snow, Kruijswijk’s crash and heartbreak, Nibali’s epic comeback, Dumoulin’s toilet stop, Yates’ capitulation on the Finestre, and Froome’s resurrection.

I’d like to clarify right now that I’m not just a jaded old man yelling at the cloud of nostalgia. Primož Roglič and Geraint Thomas’s duel in 2023 and Simon Yates’ monstrous, heroic redemption ride on the Finestre last year are two of the defining cycling moments of the 2020s.

But this year, I’m just not feeling it.

It might be something to do with the route. This year’s Corsa Rosa is conspicuously lacking in the kind of epic, iconic mountain stages the race is famous for. I love Blockhaus, but coming so soon in the race (it’s the first proper summit finish, on stage seven) could dampen its impact.

Stage 14 to Pila looks tasty, though stage 19’s multi-climb trek through the Dolomites and over the mighty Passo Giau is the only real classic Giro mountain outing of the entire race. The rest of the route elicits nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders, if I’m honest.

And then there’s the start list. Jonas Vingegaard, the second greatest grand tour rider of his generation, is here, of course. But after the Dane, things start to look pretty thin. Giulio Pellizzari is undeniably exciting, Adam Yates and Enric Mas are solid GC riders, and both Jai Hindley and Egan Bernal are former pink jersey winners. But are any of them really capable of challenging a Vingegaard on top form?

And therein lies the problem. The Giro is at its best when either the big guns turn up together – think Dumoulin and Froome in 2018 – or when the GC is fought out between the B-tier grand tour specialists.

The presence of a single superstar in the shape of Vingegaard promises to have a suffocating effect on the race, the opposite of the unpredictable chaos we expect, we need from the Giro. We’ve seen it before, when Tadej Pogačar dominated from start to finish in 2024.

And it’s not as if Jonas will pull a Pogi and launch a series of spectacular long-range attacks just for the sheer hell of it. We could be in for a long three weeks of calculating strangulation.

The Giro’s status within the cycling world also isn’t helped by the seismic shift of the Pogačar era, which has pushed the season’s narrative back towards the classics and the Tour de France. Whereas in the 2010s, after bursting out of its parochial shell for good, the Giro offered a thrilling alternative plotline, it now seems to be squeezed by the big stories happening either side of it.

The Giro was once the highlight of the cycling season. Now, as it kicks off 1,000km away from the bel paese in Bulgaria, it feels like a bit of distant afterthought.

But – and it’s a big but – that can all change over the next three weeks. That’s the beauty of the Giro, anything can, and probably will, happen. When all the drama is unfolding in the Dolomites, when all the scripts are being torn up, I’m going to look pretty stupid. And I’ll be very happy about that.

That’s why we love the Giro. Even if we’re not that excited about it right now.