As Cyclingnews sits with Giulio Pellizzari in the sunshine outside Red Bull’s Innsbruck hotel on the eve of the Tour of the Alps, a group of children – autograph hunters – come back three times during our interview. “I am a big fan,” one assures him. Five minutes later, another gives him a drawing of a yellow flower with ‘danke schön’ written beneath it.
Everyone seems to love Italy’s cycling champion-in-waiting. The race ends as it started, with young fans clamouring for mementos from the 22-year-old. “Giulio! Giulio! Giulio, per favore!” The cries echo beneath one of Trento’s churches as the race leader prepares to take on the Tour of the Alps’ fifth and final stage.
He signs a Red Bull cap and reaches over to put his signature on a green Tour of the Alps flag. It is the race’s decisive day, and he is in a position he has never been in before as a pro cyclist – defending a lead, one of four seconds to Ineos Grenadiers duo Thymen Arensman and Egan Bernal.
His Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team had talked about the possibility of bonus seconds coming into the equation in their internal pre-race plan, but the man from Le Marche had other intentions. “In my mind, I just wanted to drop everybody and arrive alone at the finish,” he said afterwards.
Pellizzari started the week at the Tour of the Alps as a favourite and finished with two stage victories and his first professional stage race win, possibly the first of many, won in exciting fashion, à la pedale.
“Last year, I was just a helper, and I started the race always thinking ‘I hope I will perform’. This morning, I had no choice, I had to perform,” Pellizzari tells Cyclingnews in the race’s final press conference. “And this makes a lot of difference. Now I’m understanding what it means to be the leader. When you have one big team like Red Bull working for you, you cannot just say, ‘I don’t have the legs.’ You have to give a lot, and I’m learning this.”
If the Tour of the Alps was a dress rehearsal for the 2026 Giro d’Italia, it was passed with flying colours. Not off the podium…
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