When Jonas Vingegaard heads to the Giro d'Italia start line at Nessebar in a little under 48 hours, even if he is a debutant, in a lot of ways he'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect in the 3,468 kilometres that lie between him and the race's final finish line at Rome on May 31. He's got eight Grand Tours in his palmarès – five Tours and three Vueltas – after all, and his lowest final position in any of them since 2021 has been second overall, with no abandons. So it's fair to say Vingegaard is very much a 'been there, done that, got the t-shirt/maillot jaune to prove it' kind of guy.
Yet at the same time, the Giro d'Italia has always been labelled as a very different kettle of stage racing fish compared to the Vuelta and Tour, one in which more than one top pre-race favourite of recent years has lost their way at one point or another. It's not just been bad form or crashes or illnesses or mechanicals that's been responsible for that either – although they've wrecked many a top contender's chances. Rather, as is often observed, the Giro is notorious for its potential for the GC battle to turn on a dime in ways that can take everybody by surprise.
Just to give one example, in 2019 double Giro winner Vincenzo Nibali lost all chance of a third victory after he and Primož Roglič – subsequently a five-time Grand Tour champion – found themselves entangled in all sorts of trouble, mainly thanks to Richard Carapaz's capacity to read the race and route better and seize his chances accordingly. After too much dithering and wrong snap decisions, as well as some illness on Roglič's part, the Italian and Slovenian had to settle for second and third behind the Ecuadorian, presumably rueing their missed opportunities. If that can happen to someone like Nibali, who'd ridden his first Giro nearly a decade before, how much higher are the risks for a newbie like Vingegaard?
Article continues belowAffini is convinced that Vingegaard's track record in the Vuelta a España and Tour de France, with victories in both, will give him added motivation to conquer the Giro this May and he does not doubt Vingegaard's high chance of final victory. However, he also warns that the Giro itself has other factors that can sometimes make it an exceptionally fraught affair.
"The Giro and the Tour de France are both intense races," Affini – who has raced all three Grand Tours, tells Cyclingnews. "These days, really, there's no race that is 'easier' whatsoever.
What is pivotal in making the Giro a different kind of three-week stage race to the Tour, Affini says, is as simple and as tricky as the weather in Italy in May, and all the major knock-on effects it can have.
"Mostly, in the Tour, you have almost three weeks of hot weather, or at least it'll be warm. Maybe not exceptionally hot, although that can happen, but the chances of snow or things like that are much lower than in the Giro. There, it's really unpredictable.
"I've done Giros with not a single drop of rain, and a Giro with almost not one single day of sunshine."
"Taking for example the 2023 Giro, when Primož won, that was really like every single day we were just riding through the rain. So that makes for a big difference."
This in turn has a very simple but potentially very powerful knock-on effect, Affini agrees. The changes in weather make the race much harder to control, and much harder to predict because you don't know whether stages will be cancelled or not cancelled, either, particularly in the Dolomites – which just happen to be where most of the crunch mountain stages of the race are held.
"That can happen," Affini says. "But at the same time, because of the weather, you can have riders that can fight better in the cold and rain, and others that suffer a lot in the rain. So that's also quite a big change for everybody, I would say."
That's not just one that affects the GC riders, either. Given the way some domestiques adapt better or worse to when the temperature plummets or soars, any GC team's strategy has to be very flexible all round.
But it's not just the racing, Affini warns, where sudden outbreaks of rain or cold can have an influence. "When you have so many days of bad weather, or even just a few, there are also higher chances of sickness. So that's also part of the game, too, and that adds extra stress to your system as well."
Affini agrees with a wry laugh that for the viewers, rather than the somewhat monotonous, set-piece battles that can dominate in the Tour, this kind of unpredictable element is exactly what gives the Giro some of its charm.
"I guess, in the end, for viewers, the more unpredictable something is, the better," he says. "Even though I'm quite sure I can speak for the whole peloton that they would prefer not to have that situation."
Globally, then, the Giro is hugely uncertain thanks to those factors, often pivoting it into a race all but defined by a constant battle against the tension. As he puts it simply but convincingly: "The stress, tiredness, you know, three weeks like that, it's really like… It just" – and he emphasises the word – "drains you."
Visma return as reigning champions
Visma do have one key possible antidote for that particular kind of complication: winning experience. They've conquered the Giro twice in the last three years with Roglič and Simon Yates – in the last ten years, only Ineos Grenadiers have won it more often, in 2018, 2020 and 2021. So for Vingegaard, and for his teammates, those previous wins mean his squad won't be entering unchartered territory when it comes to defending a Giro lead.
"The good thing as well is that we've won it in two very different ways, too," Affini points out. "I was there both times, and they were both different approaches from each other. OK, the race was, of course, the same, and both wins were, let's say, last-minute [with the lead being taken, in both cases, on the second-last day].
"But for example, in 2023 we really started with the idea of winning the GC with Primož while last year with Simon it was more, like, an ongoing project. It was kind of 'OK, here we are with Simon and we want to do the best GC possible'. It was not like in 2023, where Primož was one of the outspoken leaders of the whole peloton.
"Simon came in as a bit more of an underdog, let's say. He was always there from day one, but we didn't have the pressure of controlling the race or doing things like that. So it was a bit of a different style of winning."
However, while having that insider knowledge of how to control a race as notoriously unmanageable as the Giro is always going to be invaluable, Affini doesn't feel that what actually needs to be done on a day-to-day basis is so different from any other Grand Tour.
Riders may be in more varied form at the Giro than at the Tour, where everybody is virtually guaranteed to be on the top of their game. But while the constant attacking in modern-day Giros is taken for granted, there's been a notable shift in the Tour towards that kind of racing as well, Affini says – and what applies in one Grand Tour, applies in another, too.
"It can be sometimes quite chaotic. But also the Tour is nowadays where everyone tries to attack. It's getting a bit less controlled, the breakaway phases are taking longer and longer to happen, most of the time. So on a five-hour stage, say, you already have the first one or two hours where you're going full on as well. That's not really easy, either."
Vingegaard's lack of experience on Italian roads
All of this is a far cry from the urban legends about how in the 1990s, Giro transition stages would run at an ultra-leisurely pace for the first three hours, while sprinters' teams gently policed the front of the pack to enforce that unwritten rule. Back in the day, too, much would be made of how local knowledge of the Giro, with its notoriously varied mixture of good and bad roads, could be critical as well. But Affini says that that era has long since gone as well.
"It's now no more or less important to know the stage routes on the Giro beforehand than any other race," Affini argues.
"Everybody can look at VeloViewer, Google Maps and so on. Of course it can be useful if you've done some recons of the mountain stages for the descents, and to know in advance where there might be a bottleneck on a tricky stage, and where the peloton is going to be stressed out. But I wouldn't say that in the Giro, that advanced knowledge is more important than any other race."
So one formerly notoriously unpredictable element of the Giro – knowing the route – has been ironed out, and another – the uncontrolled attacking – is something that features more and more in every Grand Tour.
The one element that really can't be changed, though, is the risk of weather cancellations, and Affini agrees that that layer of unpredictability also has an effect on the strategy riders have to take. Which is: rather than wait for too long, doing the Giro the Giro equivalent of placing it all on black, and gambling your race on one stage that might be cancelled, it's better to take every single opportunity to gain time, even if it's just bonus seconds. In a race where the Giro's equivalent of the Alpe d'Huez or Angliru stage can suddenly be cancelled because of snow, it makes no sense to play it conservatively.
"For sure, gaining a second if it's there is always better than to lose them," Affini says. "When you have the chance to go for that, you go for it.
"It's true there are less crosswinds in the Giro than in other races, historically speaking they just don't happen so often. But it's always easy to lose time because of a crash as well. So when the opportunities are there, you should go for them. It's good to get that advantage: and by attacking early on, too, in the Giro and taking time, you can race a bit more defensively and see what the others do.
"It's a great way to save some more energy, it's not like you have to spend up energy to attack or pull back seconds. It's better like that."
Adopting one particular strategy for gaining an advantage doesn't require prior knowledge of a race, and certainly Affini is also convinced that the lack of direct experience of the Giro is not as much of a handicap as it used to be. Rather, while having Grand Tour wins in both the Vuelta and the Tour will both motivate the Danish star, he argues, they also provide ample past reference points to help Vingegaard to win the Giro as well.
"I don't think that lack of previous Giros is going to play too much of a role, to be honest," Affini says.
"We are talking about a guy that won the Tour de France twice, the Vuelta once, so he knows how to get ready and how to prepare himself for a goal like this.
"Having won both of them, I think it gives him confidence anyway, because it's not that he really needs it, but I think the idea of being close to winning all three of them will give him even an extra motivation to try to get that triple crown, as we call it.
"So every race differs from the others, but of course he can bring with him the knowledge, the experience he gained in his career in the Tour and in the Vuelta to the Giro. And that's really important."
One thing remains special to the Giro, come what may, though, and that's the grassroots popularity it enjoys. The Tour is a festival of cycling, too, but amongst the spectators, it's usually got a much more international feel. On the roadsides and the towns it passes through, once it's back on home soil, the Giro, though, remains unequivocally Italian and as Affini says "that will perhaps attract Jonas to the race as well. It's got a very special atmosphere."
"The Giro is a really deep part of the story of our country, and of course all the people that are on the road watching it, they are really passionate about it. It's always great to see so many people out there supporting it - and I'm sure Jonas will like that part of the Giro, too."
So no matter what the result, that popularity of the race on home soil is something the Dane can look forward to. And that goes for everyone else in this year's Giro d'Italia, too, from the lowest-profile of the team domestiques to the rider wearing pink on the winner's podium in Rome come May 31. In that way at least, the Giro d'Italia remains very much its own race.
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