You know what happened in the Giro, but how did it feel? Well, read below for reflections from Jonas, Felix, Jai and Sepp. Then switch over to the women’s version – which is already in disarray. *sigh* Meanwhile, Olav Kooij returned from injury to win on debut for Decathlon CMA CGM at Boucles de la Mayenne…We share a video preview of the 2026 Tour de France route (Grand Départ just over a month away!) And for you gravel fans, Sofía Gómez Villafañe and Mads Würtz Schmidt won Unbound, while the roadies did their best to keep up and stay upright.
TOP STORY
- Vingegaard – and Others – Reflect on his Grand Tour Trilogy
RACE NEWS
- Giro Women Kicks Off in Utter Stupidity
- Kooij Returns from Injury – with a Victory
- The 2026 Tour de France Route Video Preview
- Roadies Fall Short at Unbound
TEAM, RIDER AND CYCLING NEWS
- Vaughters: A Salary Cap Could Solve Cycling’s Woes
- Archie Ryan Returns to Training After Knee Surgery
- UCI to Celebrate World Bicycle Day on 3 June
- Grand Départ GB Launches Nationwide Call for Tour de France Volunteers
VIDEO
- PEZ Rides the Maratona dles Dolomiti in Corvara, Italy
Vingegaard – and Others – Reflect on his Grand Tour Trilogy
Jonas Vingegaard rolled into the Eternal City on Sunday wearing pink and carrying history on his shoulders: the 2026 Giro d’Italia champion, and the eighth man ever to win all three Grand Tours.
It was, after all, more of a coronation than a race. The Dane from Visma-Lease a Bike had put this one to bed long before Rome, strangling the life out of the field across five stage wins in the mountains.
For heaven’s sake, the man was selecting jerseys that he thought would round out his collection, instead of skinsuits that might offer an aero advantage. He put more thought into his facial hair, first growing a mustache and then shaving it, than into how he’d eke out a win.
“It’s amazing,” an emotional Vingegaard said at the finish. “It’s something I’ve dreamt of my whole life and to now be able to do it, it’s something special. I’m lost for words.” When asked about his wife and children, standing nearby in a replica Maglia Rosa, his voice cracked completely. “That only makes it even more beautiful. They are always there for me.”
Felix Gall gave everything for second, and was refreshingly clear-eyed about the gap: “He was clearly on another level. I can’t really say more than that.” Jai Hindley, back on a Grand Tour podium for the first time since winning this race in 2022, was simply relieved: “It’s been a while. To be back in there is really cool.”
Nothing about socks or centipedes this year.
Jonathan Milan finally got the stage win Lidl-Trek had been chasing for three weeks, storming the Rome sprint after a perfectly drilled team lead-out. “After three weeks that we were looking for this, we never gave up, we always kept fighting,” he said.
And Sepp Kuss, who’d won a stage two days earlier to complete his own Grand Tour stage trilogy, summed up the Visma machine better than anyone: “Sometimes the harder you look for something, the harder it is to achieve it.”
RACE NEWS
Giro Women Kicks Off in Utter Stupidity
So you didn’t find the Giro…gripping? Had trouble generating excitement over a three-week race that was largely over within the first of those three weeks? Well, here’s your chance to enjoy another week of racing – perhaps more suspenseful racing – in stunning springtime Italy.
EXCEPT that in the first 24 hours, the UCI cast one big boneheaded shadow over the race.
At nine stages, 1,179.7 km, over 12,000 meters of climbing, and a stellar cast, the women’s Giro rivals the Tour de France Femmes in import and promised excitment. Two-time defending champion Elisa Longo Borghini showed up in bib number 1; four-time winner Anna van der Breggen is back for more; Demi Vollering arrived on a wave of spring classics form having swept both the Tour of Flanders and Liège–Bastogne–Liège Femmes; and world time trial champion Marlen Reusser is chomping at the bit to boost her palmarès. In the sprints, Lorena Wiebes was the name on everyone’s lips, while Charlotte Kool has returned after four years away, and Italians Chiara Consonni and Elisa Balsamo appear ready to scrap for stage glory on home roads.
All of which is lovely. But the race’s opening weekend made news for entirely the wrong reasons.
In an age when bike racing becomes ever-more dangerous with each passing season, thanks to some combination of road furniture, increased speed, bigger contracts (which incentivize risk-taking), big-engine-little-experience riders joining the WorldTour, and other factors I haven’t come up with, the UCI made a decision that I can only call truly nutballs.
Stage 1 from Cesenatico to Ravenna was a crash-fest. Debutant Cat Ferguson, born in 2006 and one of the most exciting young talents in the peloton, went down in a large pileup and abandoned, the first rider out of the 2026 Giro before the sprint had even been contested. Movistar were decimated. It was grim.
Then Lorena Wiebes did what Lorena Wiebes does: she launched an imperious sprint in Ravenna, crossed the line first, pulled on the maglia rosa, stood on the podium. Done and dusted, right?
Wrong. Post-presentation, officials weighed her bike and found it in violation of the UCI minimum weight regulation. Wiebes was ejected from the race entirely. Not relegated, not time-penalized, but gone. And here’s the kicker: SD Worx-Protime revealed the bike came in just 20 grams under the limit, and maintained that the same bike had passed inspection at other races without issue. Twenty grams. That’s roughly four paperclips. That’s the foam on your morning cappuccino. For this, the dominant sprinter in the field was sent home.
Elisa Balsamo inherited the win, the stage result, and the pink jersey, graciously noting it was “not the way she wanted to win.” Fair play to her for saying so. Meanwhile SD Worx were, understandably, somewhere between furious and baffled.
To Balsamo’s enormous credit, she then went out on Stage 2, 156 km from Roncade to Caorle, and won the thing properly. With the race’s dominant sprint favorite no longer in the picture, Balsamo made full use of it, taking the bunch sprint ahead of Kool and Lara Gillespie while wearing the Maglia Rosa. She now leads Gillespie by eight seconds, with Consonni third at 12.
So: crashes, an abandonment, a disqualification over the weight of a flash drive – I checked – and a double stage win for a rider who never asked for any of this. Welcome to the Corsa Rosa 2026. It’s going to be a long week, evidently in the best and most chaotic possible way.
Kooij Returns from Injury — with a Victory
Olav Kooij marked his debut for Decathlon CMA CGM with a victory. On Friday – only his second race day of 2026 – the Dutchman won the first road stage of the Boucles de la Mayenne. He beat Alessio Magagnotti and Anthony Turgis in a mass sprint. Matthew Brennan, one of the other favorites for the stage win, finished only eleventh.
The day after Julius Johansen won the prologue, the first “real” stage of the Boucles de la Mayenne followed. The 172-kilometer stage ran from Saint-Berthevin to Château-Gontier-sur-Mayenne. The roads were undulating, but the riders did not encounter any really difficult climbs. A mass sprint seemed the most likely scenario. And with Olav Kooij , Mads Pedersen , and Matthew Brennan, among others , there were plenty of contenders.
Although a mass sprint seemed inevitable, five riders broke away early in the stage. Attacker Baptiste Veistroffer (Lotto-Intermarché) was the biggest name in the day’s breakaway. The five amassed a maximum lead of two minutes.
With just under forty kilometers to go, Veistroffer dropped his fellow escapees. He had a lead of one and a half minutes over the peloton, where Visma | Lease a Bike and Decathlon CMA CGM shared the work. The Frenchman was no match for the pack on his own, resulting in the expected mass sprint.
Lotto-Intermarché did take the lead in the final few hundred meters. They tried to drop Vito Braet , but Mads Pedersen started the sprint from far out. However, the Dane ran out of steam. And who benefited? Olav Kooij . In his first race for Decathlon CMA CGM, the Dutchman struck convincingly right away.
Thanks to Wielerflits for this content. Kooij went on to win the third stage as well, while Benoit Cosnefroy won the second stage and the General Classification of the mini-stage race.
The 2026 Tour de France Route Video Preview
Knowing that the interval between celebrating the Giro’s completion and looking ahead to the Tour de France lasts about five minutes, we’re happy to share this preview of the Tour’s 2026 route.
Following the Grand Départ in Barcelona, the race will pay a visit to each of the five mountain ranges in France: The Pyrenees, Massif Central, Jura and Vosges will build towards a climactic showdown in the Alps with two finishes on Alpe d’Huez, including an unprecedented ascent from the Col de Sarenne on the eve of the finish in Paris.
TEAM, RIDER AND CYCLING NEWS
Vaughters: A Salary Cap Could Solve Cycling’s Woes
In an era where a fairly small cadre of racers dominates cycling, some fans are asking how to keep the sport exciting and interesting. Jonathan Vaughters , the American team manager of EF Education-EasyPost and EF Education-Oatly, has his own idea:
His proposal? A salary cap system that sets a maximum on a team’s the total compensation, similar to the NFL’s. “Pogacar can still earn his 10 million euros a year, but the rest of the team will have to make do with the minimum. As if Pogacar were riding for Cofidis .”
According to Vaughters, that would offer many benefits for the fans. “Then we have an interesting race and I become curious again about who wins. Now you have the strongest rider riding for the strongest team. That becomes too predictable. You want a sport that isn’t like that, where you don’t know who is going to win until the very last moment. That is what the fans want.”
“In Strade Bianche, you know every year where Pogacar is going to attack,” Vaughters gives an example. “Now suppose his team can’t control anything and, after his attack, he first has to bring back a breakaway of forty riders; that is when it really gets interesting again.”
Editor’s note: Bring it on!
Archie Ryan Returns to Training After Knee Surgery
Archie Ryan is recovering from surgery performed in early February to remove plica from both knees. The 24-year-old Irish rider spent three weeks at home in Wicklow for initial recovery before returning to his training base in Andorra, where he has been focused on physiotherapy and gym work.
Ryan began pedalling roughly two-and-a-half weeks post-surgery and was riding outside within a month. The team’s medical staff, including Dr. Jon Greenwell and physiotherapist Matt Rabin, have overseen his rehabilitation program.
The goal is for Ryan to return to his previous weekly training volume by June. A return to racing is not yet confirmed, but late summer is the current target, with potential appearances at stage races ahead of the World Championships and an Italian racing block in the fall.
“Racing in August is realistic,” Ryan said. “Whether that means a couple of stage races before Worlds and an Italian block in October or the Vuelta and Worlds…Something like this would be great.”
This is not Ryan’s first extended absence due to injury, and the team has indicated it is not placing pressure on him to meet a specific return date.
Roadies Fall Short at Unbound
We road racing aficionados love to roll our eyes at the off-road disciplines, suppressing sneers when Tom Pidcock – an elite racer, to be sure, but no galactico – rallies from the last row to win a World Cup Mountain Bike race, or when Mathieu van der Poel toys with ‘cross specialists, his only real competition coming from…fellow road boss Wout van Aert.
But the tilt isn’t so steep that a veteran WorldTour racer can “retire” from road racing and immediately dominate gravel; we’re not (yet) in Messi-to-the-MLS territory yet. Romain Bardet, Thomas De Gendt and Mike Woods abandoned; one-time road racer (and current hubby of Kasia Niewiadoma) Taylor Phinney finished 52nd.
At the pointy ends of the respective races, Sofía Gómez Villafañe and Mads Würtz Schmidt took the women’s and men’s crowns, respectively. Crazily, Gómez Villafañe emerged out of a five-up sprint to win her second Unbound.
Even more crazily, US gravel celeb (and former WorldTour racer…Hmmm…) Keegan Swenson literally gave his wheel to rival Würtz Schmidt 150 miles into the brutal day. Now that wouldn’t happen in road racing. (Swenson still managed a fifth-place showing.)
Considering Unbound yourself? Be sure to watch Phinney’s account below. I think I’ll steer clear of Emporia, KS next spring.
Photos provided courtesy of LifeTime Unbound Gravel.
UCI to Celebrate World Bicycle Day on 3 June
The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and UCI World Cycling Centre (WCC) are marking the United Nations’ World Bicycle Day on 3 June with a range of global and local activities.
UCI partner MyWhoosh will host 24 consecutive virtual cycling events – one per hour – on routes across Switzerland, Japan, Arabia, Belgium, Canada, and the UAE, with participants wearing a specially designed World Bicycle Day jersey.
The UCI invites cycling organizations worldwide to host local events and share photos and videos using #WorldBicycleDay2026. Selected content will feature in a global highlights video. Submissions are due by 4 June at 18:00 CEST.
In Aigle, Switzerland, a public bike ride departs from the UCI WCC at 11:30am, with route options of 13km or 34km, followed by a barbecue. Local schools will also participate in a Ride & Learn workshop developed with Peace and Sport.
In Geneva, a short afternoon ride will be held in partnership with the UN, WHO, and others.
UCI President David Lappartient emphasized that cycling is for everyone, from competitive athletes to everyday riders.
Grand Départ GB Launches Nationwide Call for Tour de France Volunteers
British PEZ readers, this one’s for you! The search is on for 9,000 volunteers, officially called JOY Makers, to help deliver the historic Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift Grands Départs across Britain in summer 2027.
Volunteers will be the heartbeat of both races, supporting event operations and enhancing the spectator experience across all six stages in Scotland, England, and Wales. Anyone aged 16 and over can apply; no prior experience is needed, and full training will be provided.
Applications are open now until 1 September 2026 at letourgb.com/volunteer.
TV presenter Radzi Chinyanganya, backing the program, said: “Whoever you are, whatever your age or background — JOY Makers is open to everyone. If you want to bring joy, we want you.”
Those aged 18–25 can also access a Readiness to Work scheme offering employability training and career mentoring alongside their volunteering experience, creating a lasting legacy for communities across Britain.
To find out more about all six stages and stay up to date, visit letourgb.com.
PEZ VIDEO
With another week of racing in Italy – thanks to the Giro Women – we reshare Richard’s account of riding the Maratona dles Dolomiti in Corvara, Italy. It’s a climbers’ gran fondo, with 7 big climbs and 4000+ meters of elevation for the 138 long route. Check out his first-hand view here:
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The post EUROTRASH: Vingegaard Reflects on his Third Grand Tour Win appeared first on PezCycling News.
