Good morning
Hello and welcome to live coverage of stage eight of the Giro d’Italia!
More climbing today, with 3,800m of elevation gain, but the terrain is much more favourable to an enterprising breakaway getting up the road and staying away without the GC contenders spoiling the party.
In theory, at least – let’s find out…
Flo Clifford17 May 2025 10:00
Giro d’Italia stage eight preview
Stage eight sets the tone for the majority of this Giro’s mountain stages, with its toughest climb slap bang in the middle of the day. There’s 3,800m of vertical gain in total – more than stage seven, but more spread out, with several uncategorised rises as well as four categorised climbs.
The 197km stage takes in the Teramo and Piceno mountains, with a category three climb at Croce di Casale to warm up the legs before the much tougher, category Valico di Santa Maria Maddalena at just after the halfway mark. It’s 13.1km long and averaging 7%, but it gets tougher the further up you go, with more gentle lower slopes averaging 6% before a 7km section averaging 7% and hitting highs of 14%.
It’s followed by a long, technical descent before a succession of more climbing and more descending, including up to a category three climb at Montelago with around 50km to go.
From there the riders head onto a finishing circuit in and around Castelraimondo, a town that will be familiar to ardent viewers of Tirreno-Adriatico, one of the spring warm-up races. The most notable of the later climbs are the short, steep ramp up to Castel Santa Maria (12–13% gradients for 2 km), which hosts today’s Red Bull kilometre, then a 12%, 800m wall at Gagliole.
Flo Clifford17 May 2025 10:07
