Jai Hindley and Giulio Pellizzari will share team leadership at the Giro d'Italia as Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe try to defeat Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and their other GC rivals.
The two team leaders will have support from Aleksandr Vlasov in the mountains, Giovanni Aleotti and Ben Zwiehoff on other hilly stages, with Mick van Dijke, Gianni Moscon and Nico Denz as domestiques for the flat but often testing roads of the Giro. Denz could also challenge in the sprints and has three Giro victories on his palmarès.
Hindley and Pellizzari give Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe two different GC options. The Australian arrives in Bulgaria on his 30th birthday, and as the 2022 winner.
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He raced in Italy as a young rider and won on Blockhaus in 2022, with the climb featuring as the first mountain finish of this year's race. He has ridden ten Grand Tours, finishing second in the 2020 Giro, seventh at the 2023 Tour de France and fourth at the 2025 Vuelta a España.
22-year-old Pellizzari is considered Italy's next great Grand Tour rider and won the recent Tour of the Alps. He has since stayed at altitude in the Italian Alps to recover and do some final training before travelling to Bulgaria.
"At the start of the Tour of the Alps, I didn't have the confidence to understand my form for the Giro d'Italia, but day by day it got better," Pellizzari said in a Red Bull interview.
"Victory gives me and us as a team a lot of self-confidence for the Giro. We have shown that we are a strong team and can be ready to ride well there
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Pellizzari was sixth in the 2025 Giro and Vuelta but has yet to prove his Grand Tour leadership and resilience, hence Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's dual leadership strategy.
“We start this Giro with a clear GC focus and with two riders who bring different strengths to that ambition," said the team's chief of sports, Zak Dempster.
"Jai knows what it takes to win this race, and Giulio continues to take important steps in his development. They have a good relationship, and around them, we have selected a group that gives us experience, climbing strength and control across different types of stages.
"We want to race with ambition, but also with composure, and give both leaders the support they need to be in the fight when the Giro reaches its decisive moments.
Dempster rode four Grand Tours, including the 2018 Giro during his own career, and he knows the unpredictable nature of the Corsa Rosa.
"The route is demanding. There are the obvious mountain days, but there are also long stages, nervous finals, rolling terrain and moments where positioning and calm decision-making can make a big difference.
"That is why the balance of this line-up matters. We have riders who can protect Jai and Giulio before the climbs, riders who can guide the race when it becomes stressful, and riders who can still be there deep into the mountains."
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Stephen is one of the most experienced members of the Cyclingnews team, having reported on professional cycling since 1994. Before becoming Editor-at-large, he was Head of News at Cyclingnews. He has previously worked for Shift Active Media, Reuters and Cycling Weekly. He is a member of the Board of the Association Internationale des Journalistes du Cyclisme (AIJC).
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