Giulio Ciccone tried until the very end and was the last to surrender to Vingegaard's dominance. The Abruzzese rider from Lidl-Trek had set his sights on the stage finishing at Pila, one of the most anticipated, but once again had to contend with the superiority of the Dane and his Visma-Lease a Bike team: he was caught just 5 km from the finish, under the pressure of Piganzoli. "As I had already said, this was a day where certainly the general classification contenders would have wanted to perform well – says Ciccone, 31 years old, who wore the pink jersey for one day in Cosenza: he had won the Cogne stage in Val d'Aosta in 2022 -. I cared about it because it was a tough start and I wanted to be up front. I think our fate was sealed and perhaps morally it's not easy when you understand the direction the race is taking. Unfortunately, we don't always have the clarity to understand how things are going, perhaps from the TV it's always perceived a bit less, but in the end today was a complicated day".

Giulio, who finished at 6'17", went hunting for points in the mountain classifications (first on Lin Noir and Verrogne) and is now third with 75 points: Vingegaard leads with 161. He nevertheless looks with confidence to the final stages of the Giro to make his mark: "The condition is quite good, so let's try to keep pushing forward in search of a victory".