The first week of the 2025 Giro d'Italia will reach its crescendo on stage 9, with the gravel roads of Italy's most beautiful one-day race, Strade Bianche, set to paint the Giro white and strike fear into the GC contenders.
Gravel stages have featured sporadically throughout the Corsa Rosa's recent history, honouring the great Eroica rides and changing the picture of the overall race at the same time, with its two most notable recent appearances in 2010 and 2021.
The former saw Cadel Evans win one of the Giro's best-ever stages, with rain in the region creating a mud-fest on the white roads, though current forecasts suggest there won't be a repeat of that epic. While just four years ago, Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) extended his lead en route to a GC triumph, with Mauro Schmid winning from the breakaway.
With Tuscany's glorious sterrati headlining once again, it brings the ever-present adage of 'You can't win the race, but you can certainly lose it' back into play, with those dreaming of pink in Rome simply wanting to make it to Siena unscathed.
Umbria's Gubbio will host the start, filled with nerves and anticipation at 1:00 pm, before the 131-rider peloton surge west towards Tuscany, and a furious fight to make it into the day's breakaway will begin.
There are 112km of paved roads and a category 3 climb to La Cima, before the white roads rear their beautiful but simultaneously ugly head. This is where the gravel specialists and those well out of GC could make an early bid for glory. With chaos on the gravel guaranteed, escaping before its arrival could prove vital in the fight for a famous victory.
The race hits the first sector - Pieve a Salti, just under 70km from the finish in Siena, where the madness continues, with the remainder of stage 9's route primed to be the 108th Giro's biggest flashpoint yet.
Four more sectors come thick and fast: Monteroni d'Arbia, San Martino in Grania, Montaperti and finally, Colle Pinzuto, which crests with 14.1km still to ride and the stinging ride up the Via Santa Caterina to Siena's Piazza del Campo remaining.
The Giro stage won't take in Strade Bianche's two arguably most iconic sectors, the Monte Sante Marie and Le Tolfe, but there's more than enough gravel jam-packed into that final 70km.
It's not quite as brutal as the now 200 km+, Monument-like route that Strade Bianche has come to use 19 years after its inaugural edition in 2007, but it will only be more tense, with the threat of GC capitulation, and a chance for serious fireworks.
"Tomorrow's stage, we're going back into a classic Strade Bianche route," said long-term Tuscan native and Movistar DS Max Sciandri to reporters on Saturday.
"It's going to be Colle Pinzuto, a classic [Fabian] Cancellara kicker," and where Tadej Pogačar dropped Tom Pidcock to win this year's race, "and it's like a classic old Strade before it was 215km."
Pogačar isn't back at the Giro to defend his title, but Pidcock, also a former winner from 2023, is here and will line up as one of the favourites after making a decent start to his debut at the Italian Grand Tour.
The Brit is one of two former winners lining up on Sunday's stage 9 start line, alongside Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), who, despite having an amazing record of third, third, first and fourth in his four appearances, hasn't actually raced it since 2021.
They will, of course, be among the favourites for the day, but both have things working against them. Pidcock is 19th on GC and likely too close to be allowed a big gap in the break, and Van Aert's pre-race infection has put him well away from his best and struggling at times throughout the eight race days so far.
Lidl-Trek will have two of the stage favourites among their ranks, three-time stage winner at the 108th Giro already, Mads Pedersen, and perhaps the better-suited Mathias Vacek, who has been impressive throughout the race. He, like Pidcock, though, has the problem of being too close on GC to overall leaders XDS Astana, to be allowed easily into a move.
But, with the fight for whatever move forms set to be brutal and probably more than 50km long, Lidl-Trek can enter with confidence that they have a player for the final, and if Vacek makes it, he could be on course for his career-best moment.
A day of survival for the GC favourites, or a chance to attack
A compatriot of Strade's winner Pogačar will be one of the most watched racers on the white roads, and hoping he can keep things rubber-side down, unlike his compatriot in March, and that is Primož Roglič, even after relinquishing the race lead to the breakaway on stage 8.
Roglič started the Giro as the overall favourite, but, of course, has a long history of bad luck and crashes coming to ruin some of his Grand Tour campaigns over the years. It will all be about survival for him and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, as all of the hardest climbing stages – that will decide the Giro's winner – arrive in the second and third weeks.
Seven years have passed since Roglič last lined up at Strade Bianche, but his main rival, Juan Ayuso, has even less experience, having never raced the Italian Classic.
Both will be well aware of how their whole build-up to the Giro could go up in smoke in a flash with one crash or puncture at the wrong moment throughout the 181 kilometres, so Red Bull and UAE Team Emirates-XRG will have to be on high alert to exit the first week still in the game. Sciandri thinks the GC fight will be filled with fear.
"GC-wise, I think they are all going to be pretty scared, pretty tight and staying together," said the Movistar DS.
"I would let the breakaway go just to be on the less stressful side of it, if I was a GC rider, and if I was a team that had guys who could go, I would put them out there to try and have a good day in Siena - it's as simple as that.
"Again, for GC, I would just be pretty scared that stuff happens, because it's one thing doing Strade in March, and another doing it in the Giro, when it just pushes the tension up and everybody is really nervous."
One GC hopeful who won't be scared is the aforementioned Bernal, who not only did well on the gravel before winning the Giro, but also finished on the podium of the incredible edition of Strade in the same season, which was won by Mathieu van der Poel.
For some, it will offer fear, but for Bernal and Ineos, it offers a chance to employ some of the aggressive tactics they've shown throughout the season to try and unsettle both Roglič and Ayuso, who are the two frontrunners for the moment, and mount a charge for the overall victory.
The constant question of whether stages like this on gravel or cobbles should be welcomed into a Grand Tour is one that will always crop up, and it will come up again on Sunday if one of the GC stars sees their race ended.
For Sciandri, who knows more than most how "beautiful" Sunday's stage will be, even he admits he's "not in favour, but conceded that "People want spectacular. They want a show, and to be honest, there hasn't been much of a show going on."
On Stage 9, however, RCS and Mauro Vegni have planned for this show of gravel-induced carnage and beauty, and it is fireworks they should get. When the dust settles in Siena's famous Piazza del Campo, the GC picture of the 2025 Giro d'Italia could look very different, and we'll have a new king of the white gravel roads until March next year.
Key information
Start: Gubbio
Finish: Siena
Distance: 181km
Start time: 13:00 CEST
Finish time (estimate): 17:12 CEST
Climbs
- La Cima (cat. 3), km. 52.6
Sprints
- Sprint 1 - Mercatale, km. 46.6
- Sprint 2 - Sinalunga, km. 91.6
- Time bonus sprint - Colle Pinzuto, km. 166.9
Gravel sectors
- Pieve a Salti (8.0 km) km. 113
- Serravalle (9.3 km) km. 128
- San Martino in Grania (9.3 km) km. 138
- Monteaperti (0.6 km), km. 159.3
- Colle Pinzuto (2.3 km), km. 164.7
