2024 Gran Piemonte champion Neilson Powless couldn't repeat the feat on the road to Acqui Terme on Thursday afternoon, instead settling for seventh place in the chasing group 1:07 down on solo winner Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).
The US racer is building up to challenge at the final Monument of the season, Il Lombardia, this weekend. His last tuneup before heading to Como on Saturday was the hilly 179km run across Piemonte, which he won last autumn with a 42km solo ride.
This year, the 29-year-old EF Education-EasyPost rider was once again in the mix, battling with the strongest riders on the penultimate ascent of the race, the 6.1km 5.2% Casteletto d'Erro, at 47km from the finish.
However, on the final, decisive run up the climb, Powless – and the rest of the favourites in the peloton – had no answer as Del Toro mounted his race-winning attack 19.7km from the line.
Speaking to CyclingPro after the finish, Powless said that he felt good during the race, but had left too much on the road to be able to react at the decisive moment.
"I think I was a little bit out of depth today," Powless said. "I felt really good until the final time up the climb. I could feel that my legs didn't recover super well from the first time up the circuit climb when I was trying to mark Del Toro.
"I was a little bit too excited, maybe. You also just can't let him go, so…"
Powless has several one-day race victories on his palmarès alongside last year's Gran Piemonte, including Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Donostia San Sebastián Klasikoa, and two editions of the Japan Cup.
He'll now look ahead to the next one-day challenge, the 238km Il Lombardia, where he finished a career-best eighth last year. Powless concluded that he wasn't upset with how his day at Gran Piemonte had gone, rather he hoped that the race would give him the last bit of preparation he needed to challenge at the Classic of the Falling Leaves.
"I don't really think I made a bad decision today, but I just really needed a little bit more depth in the end," he said.
"I was feeling really good all day today, but just didn't recover super well from the second-to-last effort.
"Hopefully, it gave me what I needed for Il Lombardia because that's another beast."
