‘I was not expecting this after many hard moments’ – Without GC pressure, Giulio Ciccone finally achieves childhood dream of pulling on maglia rosa

When an Italian neo-pro wins a brutal mountain stage on Giro d’Italia debut from the breakaway, expectation will naturally follow for when he can target the maglia rosa and potentially challenge as a future winner. That’s exactly what Giulio Ciccone did in 2016 as a fresh-faced 21-year-old racing for Bardiani, and after a decade of trying to match that expectation, he’s finally managed to pull on pink for the first time.

During that time, Ciccone had raced seven times at his home Grand Tour, many of them starting as a GC hopeful, several ending in heartbreak, with crashes and setbacks seeing him win two more stages. But never – until Tuesday afternoon – has he pulled on the jersey which he’d dreamed about since he was a child.