Teamwork key to the maglia rosa, GC breakthroughs, and sprint domination – Five conclusions from the Giro d'Italia Women

After nine days of exciting racing, culminating in a thrilling final stage which decided the overall winner, the 2026 Giro d’Italia Women is over.

The second women's Grand Tour of the year saw a host of storylines fill the 1,151km between Cesenatico and Saluzzo, from the early sprint stages to the breakaway days and the GC-focussed mountain tests.

Two-time winner Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) featured prominently, completing her comeback from illness with victory on the final stage. It would have been nice to see that stage live from start to finish instead of ‘only’ the second half when the race had already exploded.

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Another contender, Marlen Reusser (Movistar), also returned from injury. However, her comeback was less successful, as she overestimated herself while trying to follow the best in the Dolomites, before shipping over 14 minutes on the last day.

Isabella Holmgren (Lidl-Trek) held fourth place overall until stage 9, when she couldn't follow the best anymore, losing six minutes and dropping to seventh place, though she hung onto the white under-23 jersey.

These are just some of the honourable mentions from the Giro, so let's move on to our five major conclusions from the nine-day Italian Grand Tour.

Lauren Dickson key to Demi Vollering's win

Still 49 seconds down on maglia rosa Anna van der Breggen after the curtailed queen stage that ended up finishing a kilometre from the top of the Colle delle Finestre, and with the final stage’s hardest climb cresting a whopping 90.8km from the finish, it seemed as if Demi Vollering’s bid to win the Giro d’Italia Women would fall short.

But the FDJ United-SUEZ turned the almost insurmountable challenge into an asset, splitting the race wide open from afar. Apart from Vollering, the team’s Giro line-up did not include any of their other big names on paper. However, rising starlets Célia Gery and Lauren Dickson, as well as dependable domestiques like Amber Kraak, Eva van Agt and Vittoria Guazzini, plus Ally Wollaston, showed what a dedicated team effort can do. Gery even got carte blanche to go for a stage win of her own on stage 7.

The team set up Vollering’s stage 5 victory by sending Dickson and Kraak in the breakaway, and on stage 9, they drilled it up the brutal 8.9km, 9.4% climb to Montoso with all they had. Dickson reduced the peloton to fewer than 10 riders before swinging off herself and leaving Vollering to take over.

In her first WorldTour season, the 26-year-old Scotswoman then returned in the valley – after Antonia Niedermaier, Elisa Longo Borghini, and Niamh Fisher-Black had attacked – to pull Vollering and Van der Breggen to the Colletta di Brondello, giving her GC leader time to recover.

On the final climb of the race, Vollering launched what she later admitted was an all-or-nothing attack, and it worked. She quickly left Van der Breggen behind, taking 2:20 minutes on her rival in the last 40km to win the Giro overall.

Anna van der Breggen is back with the best

Within the span of four weeks, Anna van der Breggen started the final stages of both the Vuelta Femenina and the Giro Women with the leader’s jersey, only to lose the overall lead on the final day both times. This confirms two things: She is back with the best, but the differences at the top of women’s cycling have become smaller.

A year and a half after coming out of retirement to return to the women’s peloton, the 36-year-old is absolutely back at her best level, as proved by her impressive stage 4 victory when she put over a minute into everyone else on the mountain time trial to Nevegal. But unlike the last years before her retirement after the 2021 season, when the only rider really capable of threatening Van der Breggen’s GC ambitions was Annemiek van Vleuten, there are now several riders and teams that can beat Van der Breggen.

The lack of a dedicated team with a singular focus also hurt Van der Breggen’s chances at the Giro. SD Worx-Protime’s main goal going into the race was sprint victories with Lorena Wiebes, but this plan was derailed by Wiebes’ disqualification after stage 1.

When Mikayla Harvey had to withdraw due to crash-related injuries ahead of stage 4, Van der Breggen was down to only four teammates. Of those, Elena Cecchini, Femke Gerritse, and Barbara Guarischi had clearly been picked to support Wiebes. Although they did their best to help, Van der Breggen had to rely on Valentina Cavallar for support on the hardest stages.

Cavallar did well, providing key support on stage 5 after having been sent in the breakaway as a satellite rider, but FDJ United-SUEZ's teamwork isolated Van der Breggen on the Colle delle Finestre and, more importantly, on the final stage that turned into a long-range pursuit.

Antonia Niedermaier has arrived as a first-rate GC contender

Antonia Niedermaier has been racing the women’s Giro every year since 2023, when she won a mountain stage with a late attack, only just holding off Annemiek van Vleuten as a 20-year-old, before crashing out of the race the next day. She returned in 2024 to finish sixth overall, then moved up one place to fifth overall in 2025, also winning the white under-23 jersey.

Now aged out of the under-23 ranks, Niedermaier went into the race hoping to crack the top five again in 2026 in a star-studded field that included Vollering, Van der Breggen, Marlen Reusser, defending champion Elisa Longo Borghini, and many others.

The 23-year-old ended up being one of the very strongest climbers of the whole race. She finished fourth in the Nevegal mountain time trial, only 16 seconds slower than Vollering, and on stage 5 through the Dolomites, Niedermaier had no trouble following Vollering’s attacks and finished third on the day to move up to an overall podium spot.

On the Colle delle Finestre, Niedermaier herself was the one who started to set the pace in the group of favourites after all helpers were gone, suffering but never showing her discomfort and always keeping a poker face. She followed an unsuccessful attack by Isabella Holmgren with 3.3km to go before finishing third on the stage again.

Having mostly followed the other GC favourites until then, Niedermaier made her own move on the final stage by attacking in the valley after the Montoso climb. Joined by Longo Borghini and Niamh Fisher-Black, they built an advantage of over two minutes, putting Niedermaier in the virtual maglia rosa.

In the end, Vollering bridged to the group to take the overall victory, but Niedermaier’s runner-up finish shows that she has to be considered a genuine contender for a GC victory in the future.

Elisa Balsamo's sprint domination

Lorena Wiebes is the dominant sprinter in the women’s peloton, and the occasions in the last several years where she didn’t win a sprint, often by several bike lengths, can be counted on one hand.

With such an all-conquering force out of the race after being disqualified for an underweight bike on stage 1, it was hoped that the sprint finishes would become more evenly contested among the remaining sprinters, like Elisa Balsamo, Lara Gillespie, Chiara Consonni, or Charlotte Kool.

The opposite happened. Elisa Balsamo, already having been awarded the stage 1 victory, went on to win stage 2 in a mass sprint ahead of Gillespie, Consonni, and Kool. She then proved her staying power on stage 3 by coming back to the front after a short, steep climb and winning the sprint of a reduced peloton on an uphill finish in Buja, beating Lily Williams and Femke Gerritse.

On stage 6, Balsamo profited from the excellent lead-out skills of teammate Lucinda Brand, who led her through a very technical final and dropped Balsamo off in the last 300 metres to take yet another victory, this time ahead of Maggie Coles-Lyster and Georgia Baker. With the red points jersey all but secured for Balsamo, Brand then got the nod to go for stage 7 herself, breaking away in the final and only being beaten by Gery in a small group sprint.

Positives and negatives of the date change

For most of its history, the women’s Giro had been held in early July, sometimes starting in late June, overlapping with the men’s Tour de France. This put what was then the biggest women’s stage race in a fight for attention it could only lose.

When RCS Sports & Events, organisers of the men’s Giro, took over the organisation of the women’s race ahead of the 2024 season, they announced their intention to move it to late May and early June, directly following the men’s edition.

The 2026 edition was the first in this new calendar slot, and the race has profited from it: For six days from Monday to Saturday, there was no men’s WorldTour race to compete with, and many cycling fans turned to the women’s Giro after having followed the men’s race.

However, moving the race a month earlier also had its drawbacks, exemplified by the need to shorten stage 8, while the race was already on the Colle delle Finestre, due to the threat of ice falling on the road.

The men’s Giro has often been struck by late snow or bad weather that caused route changes or stage cancellations, and now the women’s Giro is in the same boat.

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