Giulio Ciccone has raced the Giro d'Italia nine times. The 31-year-old Abruzzese has won three stages across those years, and has also worn a Grand Tour's leader's jersey before, yellow at the 2019 Tour de France, and been King of the Mountains in 2023. However, the Lidl-Trek rider has never quite managed to wear the pink jersey, to lead his home race.
That all changed on Tuesday's stage four, when, after 150 Giro stages, when, thanks to some canny bonus second poaching, Ciccone finally leads the Grand Tour. Visibly emotional on the podium, and in his TV interview, the Italian has achieved something special to him.
"The feeling is amazing," he said post-stage. "I always dreamed of this jersey since I was a kid. I started this sport dreaming to wear this jersey, and I think today I realised it. I was not expecting this today after many hard moments, especially last year with the crash. This is something really crazy."
Last year, Ciccone was forced out of the race ahead of stage 15, while he had a solid position in the top-10. At the time, he said he had "no words", such was his disappointment on. A year later, and those tears of disappointment have turned to tears of joy.
It was decided on bonus seconds: the man from Chieti took two seconds at the Red Bull KM, behind Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) and Jan Christen (UAE Team Emirates-XRG). Then, when it came down to a reduced bunch sprint, he was there again, finishing third, ahead of other riders aiming to poach pink, only behind Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Orluis Aular (Movistar). That was the decisive four bonus seconds. He now leads by just four seconds from Christen.
Ciccone explained: "This morning when we did a meeting we had a plan, and our plan was 50:50, it was one of those stages where you didn't know if it would be a sprint or a reduced bunch like it was. My plan was to just take this jersey, take the seconds in the bonus sprint and in the finish. I finished third twice, enough to wear the jersey."
As for what is next, the race reaches his home region of Abruzzo on stage seven, on Friday, with the first proper GC day to Blockhaus. The dream would be to wear pink there, to perhaps even hold it.
"I think it will be super nice, but we still have to do the stage tomorrow and hard moments before we arrive there," Ciccone said. "It's a big dream, and why not? I feel good, we have a good team. We want to defend, and we want to go really far."
The dream might not be over just yet.
