New Giro director Guercilena signals major rethink of Giro route

Luca Guercilena has hinted that he will look to include more time trialling kilometres on the Giro d’Italia route in his new role as Head of Cycling at RCS Sport.

The longtime Lidl-Trek general manager officially took up his position on September 1, and he outlined his intentions for the Giro and RCS Sport’s slate of races in interviews with La Gazzetta dello Sport and Il Corriere della Sera published on Tuesday.

“I’ve always loved time trials, and I’d like to bring them back into the spotlight,” Guercilena told La Gazzetta. “I’d like to strike a better balance between time trials and climbs, so as to broaden the range of potential winners.”

This year’s Giro included a single time trial of 42km, but it didn’t suffice to convince Remco Evenepoel to add the corsa rosa to his schedule. The 2026 Tour de France featured a 19km team time trial on the opening day and a 26km individual time trial in the third week, while the Vuelta a España has a total of 41.5km against the watch.

Guercilena said that his overarching objective for the Giro was to “make it even more international” and “as attractive as possible for teams, riders and sponsors.”

On that note, Guercilena told Il Corriere that he would not court the sport’s best riders directly in a bid to entice them to ride the Giro. “We mustn’t go out looking for big names; we need to organise a race that attracts them,” he said.

Guercilena takes up his new role after the 2026 Giro took place without a director following the retirement of Mauro Vegni. In May, RCS Sport CEO Paolo Bellino told Domestique that the new director would not be a like-for-like replacement for Vegni.

“My role is not that of a traditional patron,” Guercilena said. “Cycling has changed and needs a different, global vision. I’m not a control freak: I believe in teamwork.”

Like Vegni, Guercilena will lobby the UCI for the Giro to start a week later. RCS Sport wants the shift in dates to ensure the Giro encompasses Italy’s Festa della Repubblica public holiday on June 2, just as the Tour always coincides with Bastille Day. The hope is that a later Giro would also lead to more amenable weather in the high mountains.

“If the Festa della Repubblica on June 2 were always included, that would add value to the Giro,” said Guercilena. “The weather could be better too, and riders who target Flanders and Roubaix would also have an extra week of recovery so they could start.”

Guercilena signed a three-year contract with RCS Sport after he was surprisingly replaced at the helm of Lidl-Trek by Andy Schleck, and he set himself three objectives for that timeframe.

“We’ll look to strengthen the Giro start list, which is fundamental,” Guercilena said. “We’ll look to plan race routes further in advance, and we want to increase the economic attractiveness for sponsors and television broadcasters. It’s all connected.”