Giro d’Italia 2025 LIVE: Stage 12 result and updates as Olav Kooij wins thrilling sprint
Visma-Lease a Bike’s Giro d’Italia continued to improve as Olav Kooij picked up his first win of this year’s race
The 2025 Giro d’Italia continued with a day out for the sprinters after several intriguing stages in the battle for the general classification.
A three-man breakaway was reeled in as the riders headed onto the closing circuit in the city centre of Viadana, teeing up the expected bunch sprint on stage 12.
And it was Olav Kooij of Visma-Lease a Bike who won a thrilling, closely contested five-way battle.
Stage four winner Casper van Uden launched early but his compatriot switched effortlessly from the phenomenal leadout of teammate Wout van Aert onto van Uden’s wheel, before rounding him with ease closer to the line.
Mads Pedersen still leads the points classification by a huge margin but could not add to his three stage wins, finishing fourth, while Ben Turner of Ineos Grenadiers sprinted impressively for third, behind van Uden.
Follow all the action with The Independent’s live blog below:
How do the sprinters rate their chances?
Interestingly, Mads Pedersen downplayed his chances ahead of the stage. “I know I’m not the best sprinter, so why should we catch the breakaway?” he says on TNT Sports. “It’s completely up to the other teams [to control the stage]. You won’t see us pulling at all.” Double bluff perhaps?
Three riders up the road (165km to go)
We pass the home of Luciano Pavarotti, outside Modena, where he was born and raised. It’s now a museum with a slightly disconcerting mural of him on the wall.
Three Italians escape: Giosue Epis, Andrea Pietrobon, and Manuele Tarozzi, but the sprinters’ teams form a wall on the front of the bunch and it looks like that’s that.
Flag drop
Wilco Kelderman has also had a mechanical and he’s back in the bunch now. Quite the delay to the flag drop, but we’re underway now, and Polti-VisitMalta, VF Group Bardiani-CSF-Faizane, and Astana all fancy getting up the road. The sprinters’ teams are called into action to control this one and Visma close it down - they don’t want a big breakaway today.
Neutralised rollout
Kaden Groves has a mechanical! Bad start at kilometre zero. The flag doesn’t drop and we’ll wait for him to get back on before the race officially starts.
How do the sprinters rate their chances?
Sam Bennett has been pretty quiet so far this race but tells TNT Sports he’s been “[Coping] quite okay” with a difficult last few stages. “I felt as if I’ve got fitter as the race went on. I struggled a bit at the start, maybe a bit too fresh. Yesterday I could enjoy the Giro a bit more. Back to business today.”
Asked about how his Decathlon squad are approaching today’s stage, he says, “More about positioning and how we want to contribute to the race, and that final left-hander at 170-odd k, everything can go wrong in that corner so it’s all about getting that right.” He suggests you need to be as far forward as possible going into that corner to stand a chance of winning.
How do the sprinters rate their chances?
“Looking forward to another opportunity,” stage six winner Kaden Groves says ahead of the stage start. “It’s not been easy [the last few days] but I arrived at the Giro quite fresh and I think my legs are improving each day. Got a really good feeling.”
He also says he’s not targeting the ciclamino jersey and notes that he didn’t win any points on stage six as the race was neutralised. It’s “out of reach”, he suggests. Pedersen leads by 89 points over Alessandro Tonelli and 98 points over Olav Kooij in third.
Signing on
The riders are in Modena ahead of the expected rollout at 1.15pm local time (12.15pm BST).
Quick reminder of today’s route and what to expect:
Giro d’Italia Stage 12 preview: Map, standings and route to Viadana
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