With all the logical media attention at the Giro d'Italia about UAE Team Emirates-XRG's enforced switch into stage hunters after their GC contenders crashed out, UAE's dramatic strike rate in the first week has slightly eclipsed another team's impressive near-parallel run of success.
While unable to match UAE's hat-trick of stage triumphs, during the Giro's nine-day trek from Bulgaria to Tuscany, XDS Astana went toe to toe with the double first week winners Soudal-QuickStep and Visma-Lease a Bike. That was thanks to their clinching victories on stage 2 and stage 6, the former also making Thomas Silva the first ever racer from Uruguay to claim the pink jersey, and the second going to Italian veteran Davide Ballerini in the crash-marred finale in Naples.
For any team not focussed on the GC in a Grand Tour, even one stage win means a big drop in pressure, let alone two, and for a team like XDS Astana not built specifically around bunch sprints to get them both in the first week is even rarer.
But what are the exact effects on a team of such an unusual occurrence in Grand Tour racing these days? As XDS Astana's Italian racer Alberto Bettiol, himself a Giro stage winner back in 2021, told Cyclingnews on the rest day that, thanks to their high strike rate, he and his teammates have earned the right to race with pretty much all the freedom they could want between here and Rome
Together with UAE, this will make Astana a very interesting team to follow in the second week, where with the GC looking increasingly clear and the big mountain stages for the crunch overall battles yet to come in week 3, on paper breakaways should abound. But while not forgetting their options in sprints – that was how Ballerini got his win, after all – as Bettiol says, XDS Astana will also very much be keeping their options open on much longer-distance moves, too.
"We've got nothing to lose now, and the freedom to attack. We can do crazy things without any pressure, because if it doesn't work, it's not the end of the world," he said.
It's a formula that helps breed success, he points out, purely because they can afford to take more risks. "So sometimes when you really want something, it's difficult to get it. For example, look at [Giulio] Ciccone on stage 9, he wanted a win but in the end he didn't get it. He's worn the maglia rosa [on stage 4] but even on Sunday he couldn't get the stage.
"When you've got a free mind, you get those opportunities, like Davide Ballerini when he won in Naples for example. It was the completely opposite for Jonathan Milan," the Lidl-Trek fastman rated as one of the top sprinters in the world, very successful in previous Giros, and who has already hit the bars several times this time round, without taking a stage.
Meanwhile XDS Astana are simply taking each opportunity as an experiment in what they can do. On Sunday, for example the team were once again in the mix with 2025 Giro leader Diego Ulissi in the break, while Bettiol already tried to make it into a break alongside Filippo Ganna on stage 8.
"I tried a couple of days ago, I had the opportunity and the freedom from the team to try," he said.
"So I'm feeling pretty confident. Tomorrow [stage 10 in the TT] I'll have another opportunity because we all know that time trials after ten days is not the same as a one-shot. So I expect the GC riders will be very good, because they are better at recovery than guys like me and Ganna" – the Italian and former World TT Champion – "even if I think he is still the favourite."
"The coming week suits me very well, there are a couple of stages in particular, especially because we're riding now with this extra freedom. Our goal before the Giro was to win one stage, we've already got two, so for us from now on, we're racing feeling much more relaxed."
The circumstances in the overall battle are smiling on the breakaways, too, given there is already a clearly established GC hierarchy dominated by one team and one rider. It's true Jonas Vingegaard has not only already taken has two stage wins for Visma-Lease a Bike, he is a key favourite for a third on Tuesday's TT, too. But unlike in 2024, say, when Tadej Pogačar was taking all the stage wins on offer in the Giro en route to overall victory and ended up with six, Bettiol says there is more space for teams like XDS Astana this time round.
"Even on Sunday, Visma used the work earlier on the stage by Decathlon [to go for the win] but they were happy with the break," he explained.
"Some teams, you know, they think they are unbeatable, they put their balls on the table and they think they are the best, they pull in the peloton to motivate the riders. But the reality is not the same.
"It's happened many times in the past with UAE, we all know Pogačar is the strongest, but many times there are teams that kind of help Pogačar to win. This is what happened yesterday [Sunday] – Decathlon basically chased all day to help Jonas to chase the breakaway and take the bonus.
"Even when it's like this, though, there are opportunities. I think for Jonas, it's been enough to win both of these stages and make a big gap. Normally, he's the strongest by far on the climbs and [maglia rosa] Afonso Eulálio will be easy to beat. So for the breakaways, there will be opportunities."
It's not just that Visma are likely to be racing more conservatively. The fact that such a heavyweight team as UAE are themselves looking for breaks does favour others looking to make a move, Bettiol argues. Again, that's a scenario that does not often happen.
"Sometimes it's hard to find the right combination, because there will always be teams that are not happy with the moves, as happened when I went for it with Pippo [Filippo Ganna] a few days ago. They chased us down. Sometimes it just doesn't work.
"But I really like how a team like Red Bull work on the sprint stages here, too, they are up there but then in the last five kilometres, they sit back again. Ineos doesn't do that, they are still 'old-school'. But I'm telling you what I see, I'm not judging whether it's better or not.
"But we – as in 'we in the peloton' – see how the approach [of teams] like Red Bull and Visma is more conservative in those situations. Even if you take a gap of 10 or 20 seconds, it's not a big gap. So I prefer it like this."
And while Bettiol argues from a personal opinion that it could possibly be better for rider safety, too, if these scenarios create a situation that favours the breaks, too, then that's all the better.
The second week of the Giro criss-crosses much of north western Italy, reaching close to where Bettiol took a memorable transition stage victory in 2021 in the hills area south of Milan, at Stradella. But the 32-year-old says he doesn't dwell on what he's achieved on the past in the Giro when he's looking ahead to what the can do.
"I'm feeling confident, I have a lot of experience in three-week stage races and what I did in 2021 is in the past, but the stage I won is very similar to Friday, very flat in the beginning, just a very few hills in the last part.
"I remember that day, the really difficult part was to get in the breakaway, and sometimes once you're in the break, more than half the job is done. And I won that day even though I wasn't in the best condition, I thought the race was over, but luckily it was hard enough for me to bring back the others. There were some really good riders in that move, guys like Nico Roche, and I expect the same this week."
So things are looking promising for Bettiol and his team, he rejects the idea that having won so much, XDS Astana are now almost too relaxed, or that the pressure is so low they might actually start to under-perform from hereon.
"No, because after the first week riders think 'OK, if Davide Ballerini win a stage, I can win a stage' or Christian Scaroni can think 'OK, if Silva can win a stage, I can win a stage too'. And myself the same. It's a way of motivating each other.
"You could see that yesterday when Ulissi attacked with Ciccone and Davide Ballerini was already there. So we are not relaxed, it's the opposite. Now, we're ready to race for every single stage."
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