Just 24 hours after his epic ride into pink across the Colle delle Finestre, Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) has clinched the overall victory in the 2025 Giro d'Italia ahead of Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost).
The final stage, a flat run starting and finishing in Rome on Sunday evening, ended with a bunch sprint victory for Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike), giving the Dutchman his second win of the race and Yates' team yet another reason to celebrate in the Giro.
Yates' overall victory came after he launched a courageous last-ditch attack on the interminable, untarmacked slopes of the Colle delle Finestre on stage 20, ending an 11-day spell in the lead for Del Toro. The British racer completed the Giro safely in the main pack, nearly four minutes ahead Del Toro and almost five up on Carapaz.
Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) celebrates the best young rider classification title (Image credit: Luca Bettini / AFP / Getty Images)
The points classification was won by Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), while Lorenzo Fortunato (XDS Astana) claimed the mountains ranking and Del Toro gained the victory in the best young rider's competition.
But the main spotlight in Rome on Sunday evening was firmly on Visma-Lease a Bike and Yates, whose victory in the Giro d'Italia is his second Grand Tour win after taking the Vuelta a España back in 2018.
"We couldn't wish for a better final weekend," Kooij said afterwards. "Yesterday [Saturday] was really amazing for the team and today I had to give everything that was left in the legs.
"My teammates made it a lot easier, I just had to push it all the way to the line."
Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) reacts to carrying the maglia rosa across the finish line safely in Rome, to secure the GC victory (Image credit: Luca Bettini / AFP / Getty Images)
Yates captured the maglia rosa on an epic mountain stage Saturday, and rolled safely into Rome to officially win the overall on Sunday.
"It's still sinking in, what a huge moment this is for my career," Yates said afterwards, "probably the defining moment. I'm just incredibly proud of my team and Olav just finished it off. It's been an amazing three weeks.
"We kept the focus, we knew we had a good chance with Olav today and somehow we pulled it off.
"I've had some good successes but I don't think anything comes close to this."
How it unfolded
The stage began in a sombre mood, a minute of silence held by the entire peloton to mark the death from late last week of Daisy, the wife of former longstanding Visma-Lease a Bike rider Robert Gesink, following a short illness.
Then there was a lengthy early neutralised segment, which saw the peloton pass through the parks of the Vatican City to hear a brief speech from Pope Leo XIV, flanked by the classification leaders. Once the riders remounted, they then headed out of the Vatican and back to Italy and racing, for one last time in this year's Giro d'Italia got underway.
Pope Leo XIV (C) delivers a speech flanked by (L to R) Lidl-Trek's Mads Pedersen, best sprinter, UAE Team Emirates-XRG's Isaac del Toro in best young rider's white jersey, Simon Yates of Visma-Lease a Bike wearing the pink leader's jersey, XDS Astana Team's Lorenzo Fortunato in the KOM blue jersey (Maglia Azzura) and RCS President Urbano Cario (Image credit: Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP / Getty Images)
The first few kilometres were raced extremely gently, though with the usual final stage multiple photo oppsortunities, on-bike glasses of champagne for the winner and his team and broad smiles all round.
The stage then headed down to the Tyrrhenian coastline near Rome at the same gentle pace, before a nominal outbreak of hostilities at an intermediate sprint at Fontana dello Zodiaco. Dries de Bondt (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) secured second place behind Alessandro Tonelli (Polti-VisitMalta), enough to secure victory in that particular rankings, then Visma began to control affairs at the head of the bunch as the last part of the stage approached.
After crossing the finish line for the first time as eight loops of a finishing 9.5km circuit commenced, Australian Michael Hepburn (Jayco-AlUla) was the first to try and defy the sprinters' teams. He was then joined by Enzo Paleni (Groupama-FDJ), Alessandro Verre (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), Josef Černy (Soudal-QuickStep), Andrea Pietrobon (Polti-VisitMalta), and Martin Marcellusi (VF Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè) to open up a gap of 20 seconds.
The breakaway, led by Josef Cerny of Soudal-QuickStep (Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Into the final 50 kilometres of the Giro, the six breakaways continued ahead, but Visma-Lease a Bike, though, were happy to keep them fairly closely under control, boosted by support from Picnic-PostNL and Alpecin-Deceuninck, while Lidl-Trek were notable by their absence from the front end of affairs..
A 2020 Giro third week breakaway stage winner, Černy continued to blast away at speed, and as the six riders' margin unexpectedly widened to over 30 seconds on a warm, near-summer evening, the pace grew even higher. Černy briefly broke away after he and Harper tussled for the last Red Bull sprint of the race, the Australian being successful, but he was unable to gain much of an advantage. That sustained acceleration nonetheless meant Pietrobon was the first to throw in the towel and Hepburn followed suit with two laps to go, even as Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale provided extra support to the other fastmen's teams to bring in the remnants of the break.
Verre, Paleni and Černy ploughed on regardless of their depleted numbers and they still had 15 seconds as they tackled the slight rises, occasional section of cobbles, and the few more technical, narrow segments of the circuit in central Rome. Thankfully the weather was dry, reducing the risk of crashes.
Paleni forged on oblivious of the shrinking gap, with Černy his only companion as they entered the last lap and the Czech then went solo eight kilometres from the line, finally surrendering to the inevitable two kilometres further on.
Alpecin-Deceuninck swept to the front of the bunch as they shot past Černy, points leader Mads Pedersen also briefly pulling into view on the righthand side of the pack. Tudor and Decathlon, the latter riding for Sam Bennett, were also present in numbers as they sped alongside the side of the mighty River Tiber.
Team Visma-Lease a Bike's British rider Simon Yates wearing the pink jersey of overall leader in Rome (Image credit: Luca Bettini / AFP / Getty Images)
However, Visma-Lease a Bike continued to dominate the stage at their pleasure, with Wout van Aert setting the tempo on a nasty last little rise early in the final kilometre, then Edouardo Affini maintaining the pace on the slight downhill that followed. All of this ensured Kooij was ideally placed for the closing metres and he was more than ready to respond.
Olav Kooij (left) sprints to stage 21 victory ahead of Kaden Groves (Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Kooij launched his move late, and Matteo Moschetti (Q36.5) provided an initial challenge, only to fade almost within sight of the line. Meanwhile Naples stage winner Kaden Groves then made a ferocious last acceleration that pulled the Australian into second, although he was a little blocked in as well.
But even as Groves made his final lunge for the line, Kooij was already under the finishing gantry, with his second stage victory of the race and his team's third comfortably in the bag. With Yates overall triumph to celebrate as well, Visma-Lease a Bike were certainly finishing the 2025 Giro d'Italia in the best way possible.
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
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