‘Giulio must have asked us ten times’ - Campenaerts explains Ciccone’s late Giro heartbreak

The Italian had made the move, committed to the breakaway and spent the finale trying to hold off a peloton that, for much of the stage, did not appear fully invested in bringing him back. Visma | Lease a Bike, the team of race favourite Jonas Vingegaard, had little intention of doing the work themselves. 

Their plan was to save energy and let the attackers contest the victory. Ciccone knew that. Or at least, he tried to make sure.

According to Victor Campenaerts, Ciccone repeatedly came back to the Visma riders during the stage to ask whether they were happy for the breakaway to go all the way.

“Giulio must have come to ask us ten times if it was okay for us,” Campenaerts said afterwards to Sporza. “And it was. That was our plan.”

For Ciccone, that was the kind of answer a breakaway rider wants to hear. If the strongest team in the race was not going to chase, the road ahead suddenly looked a little more promising.

Then Decathlon CMA CGM changed the race. Campenaerts explained that Visma were prepared to leave the responsibility elsewhere, only for Oliver Naesen and his team to take up the chase.

“We thought about giving it to the breakaway,” Campenaerts said. “Controlling the escape would have cost a lot of energy, but my good friend Oliver Naesen said quite quickly: ‘If you do not do it, we will.’”

Naesen later confirmed that Decathlon CMA CGM had been in contact with Visma during the stage, although the mood between the teams remained light.

“Along the way we received quite a lot of tactical and technical advice from Visma, especially from Kampie,” Naesen said afterwards in his vlog for Sporza. “He gave me the famous instruction to start the final climb at 6.5 watts per kilo.”

That led to a funny exchange between the two Belgians.

“I said: ‘Then I still have to start calculating how much that is for me.’ He looked at me and said: ‘What do you weigh? Eighty kilos or something?’ Then I just sank through the ground for a moment, because of course it is much less than that. But it was a nice moment, we had a good laugh and in the end we shared the spoils among ourselves.”

That decision turned Ciccone’s day into a slow, brutal countdown. Decathlon CMA CGM drove the chase on the flatter roads, reducing the gap and keeping the escape within reach. 

Ciccone fought to keep the stage alive. Inside the final kilometres he was still ahead, still close enough to imagine the finish line arriving in time. But the momentum behind him had become too strong. With around 1.5 kilometres remaining, he was caught.

The stage win that had seemed possible for so long was gone.

“It is a shame for the breakaway,” Campenaerts admitted. “Giulio had come to ask so many times, and for us it was fine. But that is how it goes.”

The Italian was clearly irritated by the way the race had unfolded.

“Yeah, even today they don't want me up there from the start, Decathlon,” Ciccone said at the finish. “I spent quite a lot trying. I tried many times, and yeah, then it was just annoying the tempo in the bunch and I had nothing to lose."

Despite the disappointment, the Italian remains confident about the rest of the Giro.

"In the end, it was a good try. For sure, maybe in the next few days when we have some stages with some climbs at the start, it will be much better for me, and for sure it will be harder for the others to control, so it’s going to be better,” explained Ciccone.