For the second time in history, the Tour de Okinawa speaks Italian. Eight years after the victory achieved by Alan Marangoni (which came at the very end of his career), it is Giacomo Garavaglia who brings the Italian tricolor back to the top step of the podium of the Japanese 1.2 classic.

Second place finisher last year behind local favorite Atsushi Oda, the thirty-year-old rider from Swatt Club this time did not miss his appointment with the big prize on the finish line in Nago where, after 200 kilometers of racing, he outsprinted the other six members of the leading group with which he had escaped in the final kilometers.

Second place behind him went to Matteo Regnanti (Solution Tech NIPPO Rali), while the third position was claimed by the experienced forty-three-year-old Spanish rider Benjamin Prades of VC Fukuoka.

Garavaglia, achieving his first significant result in international races at this level (in 2023 he had won the GP Comune di Castellucchio and the Trofeo Città di Ovindoli, both national category events), was thus able to celebrate in the best possible way the last road racing commitment of the 2026 calendar year and, according to the UCI calendar and regulations, the first of 2027: based on the regulations of the world governing body, the victory achieved by the Milan-born class of '96 rider and Swatt Club (his team for the last two seasons) is in all respects the first Italian victory of the new road cycling season.

FINAL RESULTS

1. Giacomo Garavaglia (Swatt Club) 4:50:11

2. Matteo Regnanti (Solution Tech NIPPO Rali) s.t.

3. Benjamin Prades (VC Fukuoka) s.t.

4. Yuhi Todome (Aisan Racing Team) s.t.

5. Daniel Whitehouse (St George Continental Cycling Team) s.t.

Photo credit: Astemo Utsunomiya Blitzen.