Australian Chris Harper claimed his maiden Grand Tour stage victory with a long-range and daring solo attack over the Colle delle Finestre on stage 20 of the Giro d’Italia.
The man from Adelaide has been in and amongst the breakaways throughout the brutal final week of racing in Italy and the 30-year-old was finally rewarded for his efforts with his first victory in almost six years.
A large group went clear in the opening kilometres of racing with Harper making it across to the front embedded in one of the several early attacking moves. The gap back to the peloton soon grew out to over eight minutes, with the stage victory seemingly up for grabs for those in the breakaway as the GC contenders marked each other.
The lower slopes of the ominous Colle delle Finestre soon caused damage in the front group, but Harper remained unfazed as he followed the accelerations before making a move of his own with 15km of the climb remaining.
Only one rider could follow his increase in pace, but by the summit the Team Jayco AlUla man was solo, claiming the Cima Coppi prize for his efforts. With just the descent and the climb to Sestrière standing in the way of a memorable stage win, the laidback Aussie kept his cool while the battle for the Maglia Rosa raged on behind him.
In the end Harper was able to enjoy his moment in the spotlight, crossing the line with a smile on his face and his arms in the air after delivering Team Jayco AlUla their second stage win of this year’s Giro d’Italia.
Chris Harper:
“I definitely wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go today as I was up the road yesterday and I didn’t really have the legs. I also thought maybe today would be a big battle with the GC guys and the break wouldn’t arrive anyway. I got away with a big group, and I just tried to be smart. I gave it 100 percent, and I hoped I could hold on.
It means a lot (to win on the Finestre stage). It’s such a famous climb and I’m pretty proud to win the stage here. It’s a super challenging stage and I’m really happy I could pull it off.
I felt quite good at the start [of the Giro d’Italia], but unfortunately on that second rest day in the afternoon I started to feel pretty bad and ended up on antibiotics. I decided to try and recover as much as possible once I was off GC, and then the focus was these last mountain stages to try and get into a break and see if I could get a result.
I asked the car one last time how big the gap was, I knew Simon [Yates] was coming from behind, I wasn’t super confident. Once I got to about 1.5km to go, I knew I could hold on and it was a bit of a relief.”
David McPartland (Sport Director):
“Stage 20 of the Giro, it was always our plan to have one of our three climbers in the break and the boys put Chris in there, and fortunately he was on the super day; he got better and better.
He’s had a bit of illness during the middle part of the Giro and we had to scrap the plans for the GC and move on to chasing stages. It’s quite emotional actually because he’s been through a lot of hard times lately with injuries etc and he’s absolutely worked his butt off to get back to top form and he deserves this just as much as anyone.”
2025 Giro d’Italia – Stage 20:
- Chris Harper (Team Jayco AlUla) 5:27:29
- Alessandro Verre +1:49
- Simon Yates 1:57
