Giro d'Italia: Joy and tears of Nicolas Prodhomme in Champoluc

Until 1887, Champoluc had about thirty houses, about fifty stables and a wide path with more stones than gravel that a carriage could not reach the top in one piece. And no one would have thought of getting into a carriage to reach a place forgotten by man, but certainly not by God. The first time he ended up there, the mountaineer Luigi Brioschi, the first man to climb the Punta Nordend of Monte Rosa, wrote that he had “encountered with his senses the wonder of ridged panoramas, the sound of fresh flowing water, the smell of the Alpine summer”.

If it weren't for the mountaineers, probably no one would have thought of removing tons of stones and making the dirt road that connected Verrès and Brusson passable and extending it to Champoluc.

If it were not for the climbers who wanted to climb the southern face of the Monte Rosa massif, the Giro d'Italia would never have reached Champoluc. And on Nicolas Prodhomme 's face, always tending towards the tragic when the road goes uphill, a smile would not have appeared. The satisfied and amazed smile of someone who is not used to winning.

Nicolas Prodhomme had one grin per pedal stroke, one snort per meter of altitude difference, as he climbed with legs, arms and back, crooked and imperfect on his bicycle , as he freed himself from the company of Antonio Tiberi and Carlos Verona on the road that climbed towards the Col de Joux (all the other companions of escape had lost their way along the way). And then as he proceeded alone, ecstatic at the solitude of the man alone in command. Actor's Studio cycling.

Under the finish banner of the nineteenth stage of the Giro d'Italia, the Frenchman raised his arms to the sky, put his hands on his head, and shouted. Then he sat down on the ground, leaned his back against the barriers, and started laughing and crying. Because if it's not easy to pedal uphill, it's even harder to control certain emotions. Especially the ones that explode inside you after realizing you've won the hardest stage, at least in terms of altitude difference, of the 2025 Giro d'Italia .

Behind him, at the head of the group, the men in the pink jersey were in control. With their pace, they discouraged Isaac Del Toro's opponents from attacking. And when someone appeared in the very front positions, Rafał Majka approached him, looked at him, and accelerated just enough to make it clear that it was better for him to return to his place.

It worked for a long time.

Only in the last kilometers of the road that led to the Col de Joux, someone tried to free themselves from the others. It didn't last long, a few dozen meters for Giulio Pellizzari. A few hundred meters for Richard Carapaz. Only at that moment did Rafał Majka have a moment of weakness. It lasted only a few hundred pedal strokes.

Only in the last kilometers of the road that led to Antignod, the last mountain Grand Prix of the day, someone managed to break away from the small group that included the few who had managed to keep up with the pace that first Team Visma | Lease a bike and then UAE Team Emirates had imposed. And the only one who managed to do so was the usual Richard Carapaz .

We must give credit to the Ecuadorian for still believing in the possibility of wearing the pink jersey. We must give credit to the Ecuadorian for not having lost the belief that another ending is possible.

But we must give credit to Isaac Del Toro for not giving him a meter, for following him by hopping on the pedals like someone who is doing something simple. He wasn't. It was obvious. No one managed to stay in Richard Carapaz's slipstream. No one except the Mexican.

Richard Carapaz has not detached the pink jersey. He will have to wait until tomorrow, when his wheels will start to roll on the dirt road that leads to the top of the Colle delle Finestre to try again, to try to fulfill his desire to overturn the Giro d'Italia. However, he must not fret too much. Sure, he lost another two seconds from the pink jersey - now the Ecuadorian's gap in the general classification is forty-three seconds - he still distanced Simon Yates by another twenty-eight seconds: twenty-four on asphalt and four thanks to bonus points.

And if it weren't for the work done by Antonio Tiberi, who recovered from the pain caused by the fall in the last kilometers of the stage that led to Nova Gorica, there would have been much more. The Lazio rider put himself at the service of Damiano Caruso, with the will to give his all to defend, and perhaps improve, his teammate's fifth place. According to Durazzo's plans, the roles were supposed to be reversed: it is commendable that Tiberi did it. There is less and less trace of the boy who was a little too sure of himself, or at least that's how he was described at the beginning of his career.

Tomorrow the Giro d'Italia will experience its last Alpine day . It will climb the Cima Coppi, which this year looks like the Colle delle Finestre .

In solidarity with the riders who run the Giro d'Italia, here we decided to tell the stages of the Giro d'Italia doing their same hard work: a letter per meter of altitude difference. Here is the story of the nineteenth stage, Biella-Champoluc, 166 kilometers and 4,950 meters of altitude difference, in 4,950 characters (spaces included).

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