'Problems become solutions' - How UAE recovered from ruinous start to Giro d’Italia

A week into the Giro d’Italia, and the gaps between the haves and have nots are already evident. The eight stage wins thus far have been shared between just four teams. XDS-Astana, the new masters of hoovering up UCI points, have already added 820 to their running tally thanks to their two stage wins. At the bottom of the pile, Picnic-PostNL-Raisin have collected just 27 points so far, and their highest rider on GC is already 52 minutes off the maglia rosa.

There has been mitigation for plenty on this Giro, of course, with several squads left depleted following the mass crash that marred stage 2 to Veliko Tarnovo. But remarkably, the team worst affected by that incident have now collected their third victory of the race after Jhonatan Narváez soloed home in Fermo.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG lost Adam Yates, Marc Soler and Jay Vine in the high-speed pile-up in Bulgaria, which ended any prospect of challenging Jonas Vingegaard for the general classification. 

The crash came after GC leader João Almeida had already been ruled out by illness, but nothing ever seems to constitute a crisis for the team with the deepest pockets in professional cycling. Just about every other squad would have been left rudderless after losing riders of that calibre. At UAE, they simply charted a different course, with that old John F Kennedy line about crises and opportunities springing to mind. The absence of a GC contender meant that their remaining riders, once constricted by team duties, now had complete freedom to chase stage wins.

“Before the Giro, we established that there would be seven stages where we would have to be focused completely on the GC, which didn’t leave too many opportunities for the other guys on the team,” sports manager Joxean Matxin Fernandez told Domestique. “When there aren’t riders for the general classification anymore, it’s a problem, but problems sometimes become solutions. Here, the solution was that we had more room and more opportunities for the remaining riders, and more stages to try to win.”

UAE were off the mark almost immediately, with Narváez claiming victory from a reduced bunch sprint in Cosenza on stage 4 after Jan Christen attacked in the finale. In Potenza a day later, Igor Arrieta overcame a crash and a wrong turn in the finale to claim the biggest win of his young career, offering the highest drama of the Giro to date in the process. 

Narváez added their third victory when he won from the break in Fermo Saturday, and this triumph underscored the remarkable depth at UAE Team Emirates-XRG, given that his teammate Mikkel Bjerg was the day’s MVP.

Bjerg and Narváez were present in the break of the day that eventually formed after a rapid opening 70km, with the Dane explaining that they had deliberately opted against trying to join the very early moves.

“In the beginning, you have to gamble a bit and say, ‘OK, we try to cover as much as we can, but it has to make sense as well,’” Bjerg said beyond the finish line in Fermo. “Normally after one hour and a half or something, most guys start to be really tired.”

UAE’s remaining quintet are not like most guys, of course, and once the move got some traction, Bjerg drove on the front to ensure it would stay clear. Although Bjerg has ambitions of his own on this race, the muri in the finale meant there was no debate about the UAE strategy here. 

In the three-man move with Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X Mobility), Bjerg’s role was to work for Narváez on the flat for as long as he possibly good. He fulfilled that obligation and then some.

“Jonny was our captain for today, so I tried to say to him, ‘change, change’ to make sure he took as short turns as possible in the beginning,” Bjerg said. “I just tried to build the gap to the guys chasing. Then, once we hit the climbs, we had managed the speed a bit so he wouldn’t drop me. But I saw Jonny had crazy legs, so once we hit the second last climb, I said to him, ‘Go,’ because it didn’t make sense that he waited for me.”

The smooth understanding between Bjerg and Narváez helped to secure the win for the UAE, and such harmony isn’t always the norm in these pressured situations. When the chasing group spilled across the line, for instance, there appeared to be some disagreement between the Soudal Quick-Step duo of Filippo Zana and Gianmarco Garofoli about how the finale had unfolded. And that’s understandable – trying to win Giro stages is an emotional business.

Losing the chance to win the Giro in the opening week is a blow too, but UAE bounced back from it with remarkable speed. Their running tally for the season, by the way, is now at 32 – not too far off the rhythm that carried them to a record 97 wins in 2026.

“Obviously, the Giro is one of the best races in the world, but for us there’s no such thing as a small race on the calendar: this team’s mindset is really always to win,” Matxin said. “And the five riders we have left all have options.”