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MILANO ITALY OCTOBER 25 Podium Jai Hindley of Australia and Team Sunweb Tao Geoghegan Hart of The United Kingdom and Team INEOS Grenadiers Pink Leader Jersey Wilco Kelderman of The Netherlands and Team Sunweb Celebration during the 103rd Giro dItalia 2020 Stage 21 a 157km Individual time trial from Cernusco sul Naviglio to Milano ITT girodiitalia Giro on October 25 2020 in Milano Italy Photo by Tim de WaeleGetty Images — Tao Geoghegan Hart wins the 2020 Giro d'Italia (Image credit: Getty Images Sport)

Giro d'Italia resources

Stage 21 recap

Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos Grenadiers) won the 2020 Giro d'Italia after a thrilling stage 21 finale that saw a battle for the overall classification against overnight leader Jai Hindley (Team Sunweb).

Geoghegan Hart covered the 15.7km time trial between Cernusco sul Naviglio and Milan in a time of 18:14, finishing over half a minute ahead of Hindley to win the overall classification on the final day of the Italian Grand Tour.

Hindley, who started the day in the maglia rosa, slid to second place overall at 39 seconds down, while his Sunweb teammate Wilco Kelderman finished third overall at 1:29 down.

It was an outstanding Giro d'Italia for Ineos Grenadiers that won seven stages over the course of three weeks, despite losing Geraint Thomas on stage 3 following a crash.

Filippo Ganna won all three time trials on stage 1 in Palermo, stage 14 in Valdobbiadene and the stage 21 finale in Milan, along with the mountainous stage 5 in Camigliatello Silano. Jhonatan Narváez won stage 12 into Cesenatico and overall winner Geoghegan Hart took double stage wins on stage 15 atop Piancavallo and stage 20 atop Sestriere.

In Milan, Ganna won the final stage 21 time trial with a blistering time of 17:16, besting runner-up Victor Campenaerts (NTT Pro Cycling) and third-placed Rohan Dennis (also Ineos Grenadiers) by 32 seconds.

On the final podium stood Geoghegan Hart, who won both the maglia rosa as the overall winner and the white jersey as the event's best young rider.

Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) secured the maglia ciclamino as points classification winner and Ruben Guerreiro (EF Pro Cycling) topped the mountains classification to win the blue jersey.

The riders of Ineos Grenadiers stood on top of the final podium together after winning the best overall team classification at the 2020 Giro d'Italia.

Route

The postponed Giro d’Italia gets underway in Monreale on October 3 with a 15.1km individual time trial, having moved from its normal May time slot to the autumn because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rather than start in Budapest, as originally planned, the Giro d'Italia will start with four days in Sicily – site of the start of the 2021 race – before reaching the mainland on stage 5 and the race then winds its way northwards and into the high mountains.

The Giro d'Italia starts in Palermo on Saturday October 3 with a mostly downhill 15.1km time trial from the hill-top village of Monreale and finishes in Milan on Sunday October 25 with a 15.7km time trial to the spectacular Duomo.

As well as featuring three individual time trials that total almost 70km in distance, the Giro d'Italia will include a series of high-altitude mountain passes in its third week. The penultimate stage will bring the gruppo from Alba to Sestriere.

To balance out the amount of time trial kilometers the race organisers RCS have also including a whopping 40,000 meters of climbing across 50 classified climbs and five summit finishes. That amount of climbing in the mountains will ensure that the Giro d'Italia is a close-fought race, with pre-race favorite Geraint Thomas facing stiff opposition from the climbers.

The 2019 Giro was won by Richard Carapaz, who seized the maglia rosa after claiming stage victory at Courmayeur. The Ecuadorian rode with assurance in the final week to repel the challenges of Vincenzo Nibali and Primoz Roglic, and he was feted as the Giro champion in the Arena in Verona. Carapaz will not return to defend his crown in 2020 having raced the Tour de France earlier this year.

Team-by-team analysis

Giro d'Italia: Race favourites

Vincenzo Nibali will return to the Giro d'Italia in 2020 in the colours of his new team Trek-Segafredo, while Peter Sagan will make his Giro d'Italia debut. Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers), having been omitted from his team's squad for the Tour de France, will start as one of the overall favourites but he will have to take on the likes of Nibali, Jacob Fuglsang (Astana), and Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) to win the coveted maglia rosa.

Yates won three stages in 2018 and wore the maglia rosa until he cracked with just a handful of stages remaining. This time around he has said that he has learned from his mistakes, and he certainly looked in form in September, when he won Tirreno-Adriatico, ahead of Geraint Thomas.

Other potential GC contenders for the overall include Steven Kruijswijk (Jumbo-Visma) and Rafal Majka (Bora-Hansgrohe) but the Giro d'Italia almost always throws up a few surprises in the race for the maglia rosa and even though Remco Evenepoel is missing through injury, there are a number of young riders making their debuts who are worth watching over the three-week Italian Grand Tour.

Kruijswijk also missed the Tour de France through injury but the Dutch rider came close to winning the Giro d'Italia back in 2016 and this year's route certainty suits him. Majka has a strong Bora-hansgrohe team around him and is riding for a new contract for next year, so should be highly motivated to perform.

The Sprinters

The race has a number of high-profile sprinters on the start list, despite news that Caleb Ewan would no longer be at the race. Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates) leads the line but the Colombian fast man will face stiff competition from Arnaud Demare (Groupama FDJ), Elia Viviani (Cofidis), Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe), and Alvaro Hodeg (Deceuninck - Quick Step). Michael Matthews (Team Sunweb) is also on the start list and will be targeting stage wins before his move to Mitchelton-Scott in 2020.