Opinions on the 2025 Giro d’Italia are deeply divided. Perhaps that’s because, by today’s standards, it was a tight, suspenseful race. But compared to the great Grand Tours of the past, it felt less captivating — and not out of nostalgia, but for specific technical reasons that have reshaped both these races and pro cycling as a whole.
Nowadays, pure climbers dominate: ultra-light riders, optimized for ascents. The leader’s jersey almost always ends up on the shoulders of those with a power-to-weight ratio heavily skewed toward lightness.
Simon Yates: 58 kg. Isaac Del Toro: 64 kg. Richard Carapaz: 62 kg. And a rider like Miguel Indurain, who weighed 80 kg and won 5 Tours de France and 2 Giri d’Italia — how would he fare today? Probably not well. Or at least with much greater difficulty. That’s because time trials — once the natural ground for big engines — have practically disappeared. Instead of 50–60 flat kilometers against the clock, riders now face just 30–35 km, often with climbs included. The result? We now watch Grand Tours where only one rider archetype shines: the climber. Once upon a time, Grand Tours offered a battle of opposites: the time trialist gained minutes in the solo tests; the climber attacked in the mountains to recover lost ground. Today, we mostly see matchups between riders with very similar profiles — like Carapaz and Del Toro, two punchy climbers where the final margin was shaped more by how cleanly the Mexican took a few corners than by a true performance gap.
Course design plays a crucial role too. A Grand Tour route should mirror a well-designed one-day race: two major climbs, some tricky rolling sections, multiple tactical hotspots. Instead, the 2025 Giro served up long stretches of up-and-down terrain, often ending with just one decisive climb. That kind of route — whether over one day or twenty — inevitably encourages riders to wait until the final climb. But a single ascent doesn’t make a GC-worthy stage. You need a true “queen stage.” Time trials used to help establish the GC on terrain that couldn’t produce a decisive mountain showdown on its own. Now, without them, many stages feel tactically flat.
What if we had two flat 50 km time trials again, instead of today’s short and technical efforts? We’d likely see a very different GC battle. Riders capable of gaining two minutes against the clock — and then trying to defend in the climbs — would bring variety and unpredictability. Think of Filippo Ganna. Or Wout van Aert in his incredible 2021 season: winning time trials, conquering Mont Ventoux, and sprinting to victory on the Champs-Élysées. But these riders don’t even try. The modern Grand Tour design excludes them from the start. They focus on classics or stage wins instead, with no thought of going for GC. Because today, Grand Tour victories are strictly the domain of pure climbers. And that’s a loss for the sport.
