The Giro wants stars - will Seixas answer the call in 2027?

The Giro d’Italia has a new director with a new vision, but some details are beyond even Luca Guercilena’s control.  The route presentation at Rome’s Parco della Musica was still the very antithesis of a made-for-television spectacle, running on for some two hours, and when the lights finally went up in the auditorium on Tuesday, the traditional question lingered – who’s riding?

The Tour de France has never really made a pitch for star riders, at least until Christian Prudhomme made strikingly public overtures for Paul Seixas to ride last spring, but the Giro has long been in the business of trying to persuade the best riders in the world to add the corsa rosa to their programmes.

Hefty appearance fees have moved the dial in generations past, even if organisers and riders alike rarely admitted as much. Route design, of course, is always a key factor, and in keeping with recent editions, the 2027 course has been tailored to give riders the option of taking a tilt at the Giro-Tour double. The total altitude gain of 50,250m isn’t as low as the 45,907m RCS Sport pitched at Tadej Pogačar in 2024 but it’s far removed from the excesses of previous generations.

Above all, and as was the case at this year’s Giro, the configuration of the route is more relevant than the raw numbers. There are some familiar, daunting passes on the course, but Guercilena and his team have opted against placing tough mountain stages on consecutive days, and the summit finishes are spread evenly across the Giro, with three in the first week and two in the second.

The final week features a tappone over the Mortirolo and Gavia with an eyewatering 5,700m of climbing, as well as summit finishes at Madonna di Campiglio and Monte Zoncolan, but those three set-piece stages are split by altogether gentler days to Vo’ and Sacile. 

In the 1990s and 2000s, an extreme third week became a calling card at the Giro: “The capital Week, the famous Third Week, the mother of all weeks,” as the journalist Cristiano Gatti put it a few years ago.

The 2023 Giro seems to have been a watershed moment in that regard. The stages to Monte Bondone, Zoldo Alto and Tre Cime di Lavaredo looked great on paper, but they proved too much in practice, especially with a time trial up Monte Lussari on the penultimate day. The contenders, very understandably, were reluctant to take any risks, and the racing was tense rather than tumultuous.

The basic ingredients of the Giro’s traditionally demanding final week are in place for 2027, but by dividing the climbing into three distinct courses, Guercilena is hoping to whet the appetites of riders who suspect Pogačar will again leave them fighting over crumbs from his table in July. But who’s going to bite?

The balanced route leaves the door ajar for Pogačar himself to attempt another Giro-Tour double, of course, but it seems unlikely that he will return in 2027, despite the early incursion into Slovenia. Pogačar has unfinished business at Paris-Roubaix and the Vuelta a España, and his agent Alex Carera has already hinted that those races will take priority alongside his habitual targets at the Tour and Worlds.

It seems altogether more probable that Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG stablemate Isaac del Toro will opt for the Giro after placing third in his debut Tour. Pogačar ultimately didn’t require much help from Del Toro in July, and UAE’s depth means the team could certainly afford to send the Mexican to the Giro, a race he could – and maybe should – have won in 2025.

Defending Giro champion Jonas Vingegaard opted against attending Tuesday’s presentation, though given his preference for spending time at home during the off-season, it would be unwise to read too much into his absence one way or another.

In 2026, Vingegaard opted for the Giro both to complete a full set of Grand Tour wins and to make a factory reset in his attempt to beat Pogačar at the Tour, but crashing out in July meant the experiment was never completed. It remains to be seen if Visma Lease a Bike will be tempted to repeat the experiment from scratch in 2027, especially when the time trial-heavy Tour route seems to penalise Vingegaard more than anyone else.

When Guercilena outlined his desire to include more time trialling on the Giro route, most observers read his comments as a pitch to Remco Evenepoel. The Belgian could certainly make hay in both the steady mountain time trial to Campo di Giove on stage 7 and in the flat and fast 37.3km test to Milan on stage 15, while the absence of back-to-back mountain days would also benefit him.

The problem for RCS Sport, however, is that ASO has beaten them to the punch: the 2027 Tour has 71km of time trialling, its highest quota since 2012, and Evenepoel won’t pass up that opportunity. Given the carefully calibrated effort Evenepoel requires to hit his ideal climbing weight for July, a tilt at the Giro-Tour double seems implausible.

In Evenepoel’s likely absence, the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe challenge looks set to be led by Giulio Pellizzari and, perhaps, by Florian Lipowitz. The German won’t beat Pogačar at the Tour, but he could fly very high indeed at a Giro, especially if the ‘alien’ talents are not on the start line.

Elsewhere, Lidl-Trek’s overload of GC talent means that they will surely bring two leaders to Italy along with a sprinter. Mattias Skjelmose seems likely to ride, but one wonders if Lidl-Trek might be tempted to send Juan Ayuso to the Giro with the aim of winning rather than deploying him at the Tour in the hope of getting on the podium.

But the biggest question mark surrounds Paul Seixas, who has used a recent round of media appearances in France to float the surprising idea that he could skip the Tour. Officially, Seixas’ rationale is that the World Championships in Haute-Savoie are his main goal in 2027, but it might also be a gambit in his ongoing contract negotiations with Decathlon CMA CGM.

Even so, Guercilena will have been heartened by Seixas’ answers to a playful series of rapid-fire questions from RMC, when he repeatedly confirmed that winning the Giro at some point in his career was very high indeed on his list of priorities. 

RCS certainly seem intent on wooing Seixas. It was hardly a coincidence that Tuesday morning’s edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport carried a two-page spread on Seixas under the headline “Pink temptation,” while the Frenchman had already featured on the cover of the newspaper’s magazine supplement at the weekend.

After enjoying his first Monument victory at Il Lombardia in October, will Seixas be emboldened enough to feel he can now challenge Pogačar in July, or will he prefer to return to Italian roads in May? 

The old truisms all apply to Guercilena’s new era at the Giro, including the notion that a race director should be careful what he wishes for. RCS Sport successfully courted Pogačar in 2024 and Vingegaard in 2026, but on each occasion, bringing a lone S-tier talent without a rival at his level also stripped the Giro of all suspense. The races provided plenty of content for Pogačar and Vingegaard’s personal highlight reels, but they offered little succour to those hungry for a compelling narrative.

Then again, that’s all part of the equation for a Grand Tour organiser in the 2020s. The marquee names attract the crowds, but their dominance can also ruin the show. Meanwhile, the impulse to design a route that maintains suspense deep into the third week is countered by the obligation to provide daily drama for audiences whose attention might wander. 

Striking the right balance is easier said than done. The Giro’s most emblematic director, Vincenzo Torriani, used to trot out a variation on the same theme after the presentation every winter. The route is the canvas, he would say, but the riders will do the painting.

That statement feels all the more pertinent in the supersonic cycling of the 2020s, where the presence of one rider – a Pogačar, a Vingegaard or even a Seixas – can change the dynamic of the whole race. 

The canvas is ready, but it’s too soon to say if May will produce a masterpiece when we still don’t know the artists. Same as it ever was.