Giro d’Italia 2025 LIVE: Stage 8 updates, route and results today

Here’s Ayuso’s assessment of his win on stage seven.

“It’s my fourth Grand Tour, and especially in the two Vuelta a Españas I raced I was sometimes very close, but I never managed to pull it off, so to finally do it today in my first Giro d’Italia is something super special and I will always remember,” he said after the finish.

“I knew that I only had to do one attack, I couldn’t mess around and do two or three. In these finals, which are super explosive, you only have one bullet to use. So I let others start attacking before, and then when I saw my distance, I went full gas into the finish.”

Ayuso was simply unstoppable on stage seven but his teammate Isaac del Toro also climbed brilliantly to take second and deny Roglic any bonus seconds – he could provide UAE with another card to play.

Roglic was caught out of position when Ayuso attacked and probably won’t make that mistake again, but minimsed the damage.

Egan Bernal looked nearly back to his best with third place, in a major boost to Ineos, who have really attacked this race so far and been rewarded for doing so.

There were strong performances too from British climber Max Poole – only 22 and looking really good for the general classification – as well as, at the other end of the spectrum, the 37-year-old veteran Damiano Caruso.

Outside the top 10 but still performing creditably where both Yates brothers – Simon finished 11th, eight seconds down on Ayuso, and Adam 14th, 14 seconds back – as well as Derek Gee, 12th and 11 seconds back.

Thymen Arensman was 17th and 14 seconds off the pace, while Tom Pidcock’s GC challenge continues as he was only 34 seconds down in 20th, just ahead of Mathias Vacek.

1) Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe), in 24:32:30

2) Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +4”

3) Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +9”

4) Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious) +27”

5) Max Poole (Team Picnic PostNL) +30”

6) Michael Storer (Tudor Pro Cycling Team) +33”

7) Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +34”

8) Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek) +37”

9) Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) +39”

10) Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) +39”

1) Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), in 4:20:25

2) Isaac del Toro Isaac (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), +4”

3) Egan Bernal (INEOS Grenadiers), +4”

4) Primoz Roglic Primoz (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe), +4”

5) Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), +4”

6) Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious), +4”

7) Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious), +4”

8) Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), +4”

9) Max Poole (Team Picnic PostNL), +8”

10) Michael Storer (Tudor Pro Cycling Team), +8”

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Stage eight is scheduled to start at 12.15pm local time (11.15am BST) and should conclude by 5.30pm local time (4.30pm BST).

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.

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…