After a grueling battle, down to the seconds, Roglic manages to achieve his personal feat: he loses the pink jersey he desperately wanted to lose and hands it over to Ulissi, for an Italy celebrating after immemorial ages.

The 2024 Giro was a guy who wanted the pink jersey at all costs, who missed it on the first day but immediately put it on afterward, never letting it go, instead celebrating it daily with a series of impressive feats, each more beautiful than the last. This 2025 edition, twelve months later, is a guy who simply doesn't want the pink jersey, and whenever he gets it, he immediately invents a way to pass it to someone else, asking for nothing in return, only requesting to be relieved of the hassle of defending it, damn it, just think about the stress until Rome, come on, it's not a life.

Thanks Roglic, long live Ulissi and Fortunato. As Italy, we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, given the depressive conjuncture lasting since the Wars of Independence. A hard-earned celebration is a deserved celebration. It's understood that everything must be weighed and reasoned, so we must also know how much these pink jerseys and these second-place finishes are worth in absolute terms.

The difference between defining the Castelraimondo stage unforgettable is the same as between Zavoli's Trial and Fabretti's Trial. The so-called or self-proclaimed big shots are once again just looking at each other, once more turning the Giro into an eternal waiting room, and who cares if even the frenetic Marche up-and-down, once an ideal gym for great battles, ends in another final sprint (Ayuso steals another second, in this atmosphere a massive result).

And that's all. So far it's gone like this, good for us that we have Ulissi and Fortunato in the top two positions. It can happen where nothing happens. Just have people smart enough to take advantage of the void and thank God we have that this time.

Always thank God, something tells me they must finally wake up in what is certainly the most spectacular and romantic stage of the Giro: sure, of course, from Gubbio to Siena dusting off the Tuscan watercolors on the white roads. Let's say it: if they manage to do tourism even tomorrow, it really means they have no soul. The strength of the gravel roads is precisely in bringing cycling back to the time and way of skill, balance, effort, and courage. Just to make myself likable to the anti-Pogacar: on that terrain, just a couple of months ago, the world champion ended up off-road, with a somersault into the brambles, rooting like a wild boar, but then managed to catch up with Pidcock and win alone. But we understand each other: there are ways and ways to face the cayenne of white roads. There's the sixth monument's way, full throttle, with a knife between the teeth, and there's the way of elderly Anglo-Saxon couples on a wine and food tour, maybe on an assisted bike. It depends on temperament and objectives. It's right to ask the Roglics, the Ayusos, the Bernals, the Ciccones, the same specialist Pidcock for the maximum. At least today, in the most noble and poetic stage of the first two weeks. Gentlemen of the classification, enough with the masquerades and disguises, show your claws and try to give it your all. It's an appeal. It's a plea. The pink jersey doesn't deserve to see people only busy finding the best way to lose it. This is the Giro d'Italia, doesn't this word mean anything?