Giro d'Italia 2025 Stage 8

May 17, 2025 The 3,700M of climbing today is more than yesterday's uphill finish but it likely won't be as selective in the GC group, but it could be a good day for the first break to make it to the finish. It's a gentle start out of the seaside town of Giulianova with the first Intermediate Sprint coming after 50KM of racing in Roccafluvione. The Croce di Casle is the first categorized climb, summitting at 136KM to go. The major climb of the day is the 13KM, 7% average Valico Di Santa Maria Maddalena (Sassotetto) halfway through the stage. A long descent towards Serravalle di Chienti takes the riders to the 5.5KM climb up Montelago. The final 46KM are gradually rolling downhill with the Redbull Golden Kilometer at 20KM to go before the finish in Castelraimondo. The riders cast sharp shadows at the sign-on with perfect racing conditions set for the race into Le Marche. The start was aggressive as expected. Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek, Mattia Cattaneo of Soudal Quickstep, and Davide De Pretto of Jayco AlUla got away after around 10KM but there were too many teams that missed out for it to be a done deal. The three leaders hung out front by around 20 seconds for a long time while riders were still fighting to get away from the bunch. A group of five finally broke clear on a descent after Maltignano but the attacking continued from the bunch. They were reabsorbed with 160KM to go and the gap to the three leaders was down to 15 seconds. Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe tried to control and let Pedersen, Cattaneo, and De Pretto go but the collective peloton continued to attack. Pedersen took the sprint points in Roccafluvione but their lead was still tenuous at 10 seconds. The road started to tip up for the start of the Croce di Casle and Pedersen, De Pretto, and Cattaneo were caught. Lighter riders started to show themselves and by the top, Davide Piganzoli and Alessandro Tonelli of Polti-VisitMalta and Nairo Quintana of Movistar led but only by a handful of seconds. They were joined by Louis Meintjes of Intermarché-Wanty, Chris Hamilton of Picnic-PostNL, and Wilco Kelderman of Visma-Lease a Bike on the descent but once again, the race was back together with 124KM to race. 7KM later, a group of 12 broke away with a few more joining to make the group 20 riders. The gap started to grow and the break was official at 110KM to go after a furious 87KM of full on racing. The break started the Sassotetto at 104.5KM to go with an expanding gap of 1 minute 30 seconds. Dylan van Baarle of Visma-Lease a Bike did the majority of riding up the climb in the break and by the time they got to the top, the gap was 5 minutes 10 seconds as Lorenzo Fortunato of XDS-Astana took the maximum points. Romain Bardet of Picnic-PostNL joined Fortunato and the pair pushed on the descent to break up the large group. Georg Steinhauser of EF-Education First EasyPost came across with Andrea Vendrame of Decathlon AG2R and the four leaders had 30 seconds at the bottom of the descent in San Lorenzo al Lago with 78KM to go. They were brought back but it wasn't long before the group split again, this time with Diego Ulissi of XDS-Astana, Igor Arrieta of UAE-XRG, Luke Plapp of Jayco AlUla, Kelderman, Steinhauser, Vendrame, and Bardet. When the leaders got to the base of Montelago in Serravalle di Chienti at 51KM to go, they had 1 minute 30 seconds on the rest of the break and 5 minutes 30 seconds on the peloton. With this gap, Ulissi was sitting in the virtual GC lead. Kelderman and Ulissi broke away and started the climb with 20 seconds on the rest. Arrieta joined back up with 2KM to climb and Plapp got on 500M later. It was only a few moments later that Plapp attacked and was solo over the top with 45KM to go. Plapp had flown the coop and by the 25KM to go banner, his gap had grown to 1 minute to Kelderman, Ulissi, and Arrieta. Arrieta attacked Kelderman and Ulissi on the climb to Castel Santa Maria to go in pursuit of Plapp. The gap came down by 15 seconds but Plapp's consistent pace drew it out to over 1 minute again through the streets of Matelica where Arrieta was caught by Kelderman and Ulissi. Ulissi was intent in keeping the pressure on in the chase group because at 10KM to go, he was still in the virtual race lead by 43 seconds over Primož Roglič of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe and 21 seconds to Fortunato who was still riding in a group between Ulissi and the peloton. No one would catch Plapp though and the Australian came across the line for his first Grand Tour stage win in an absolute breathless day of racing. Kelderman came across 38 seconds later in second with Ulissi in tow. The clock starting ticking to see if Ulissi would take the Maglia Rosa. The bunch hit the line 4 minutes 11 seconds later which was enough to put Ulissi into the Maglia Rosa by just 12 seconds to his teammate Fortunato and 17 seconds to Roglič. Ulissi becomes the first Italian to wear the Maglia Rosa for over 4 years.