Giulio Ciccone had high hopes he'd be wearing his first-ever Giro d'Italia leader's jersey when the race reaches his native Abruzzo region on Friday. But even if he's no longer in pink, the Lidl-Trek racer warns that stage 7 will be one of the most important days of the entire 2026 race for the GC battle.
The reason is the stage's finish on the category 1 Blockhaus, the Giro's first summit finish. It's a climb Ciccone has tackled multiple times in training and once in Italy's biggest bike race, too, back in 2022.
Finishing 28th on that day in the Giro, all the Abruzzo fans were cheering for Ciccone that day. However he's faring on Friday, the Lidl-Trek racer will likely receive some strong local support once again, both on the tough series of approach roads through the Apennines and on the 13-kilometre climb of the Blockhaus itself.
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Ciccone was unable to hold onto the GC lead on the rain-lashed trek through the rugged Basilicata region on Wednesday, but he believes a climb like the Blockhaus is sure to see a major battle unfold between the overall contenders, with Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) certain to try to distance his rivals.
"It's an important stage which can create some major gaps in the overall classification, a real badass climb and one that comes almost at the start of the race, so it'll see movement and do a lot of harm," Ciccone told Cyclingnews earlier in the race.
"We go up the toughest side" - via the village of Roccamorice, "and that'll be really difficult because of the steadiness of the steeper slopes," with no false flats at all and two-thirds of the climb at a relentless 9%.
"Then the way we get there is really hard, too," with a category 2 climb to Roccaraso the first major challenge, "and the stage itself is very difficult and very long. There are a whole series of circumstances and terrain which will combine to make it one of the hardest days of the entire Giro."
The complete absence of false flats, or brief drops down in the climb, will take an even bigger toll, Ciccone warns, while pointing out that the profile of the Blockhaus is also "very, very good for Jonas Vingegaard."
"He likes climbs that don't have too many changes in gradient, the ones that have that really constant single effort he's so good at, and he's done brilliantly on those sorts of ascents in the past.
"There are a lot of summit finishes in every Giro, but this is one that counts even more than usual, because once you start to lose time here and crack, you really crack.
Now lying sixth overall at more than six minutes on race leader Afonso Eulálio, Ciccone doesn't go so far as some observers, who've said that the Blockhaus is where Vingegaard could attack so hard he might even put the entire Giro lead out of reach. He points out that there are plenty of other climbs in the second and third week where everything could change yet again.
However, the Blockhaus is the first and the hardest ascent of the first half of the Giro and whatever Vingegaard does or doesn't do there will have a huge knock-on effect on the rest of the race.
As Ciccone put it, "the Blockhaus is the first important one for him, because this is where he can make a really big down payment on the Giro GC. It matters a lot."
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