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:
Giro d’Italia 2025 stage-by-stage guide: Route maps and profiles for all 21 days
Want to get ahead on the action after today? Lawrence Ostlere has put together a handy stage-by-stage guide to this year’s race:
Giro d’Italia 2025 stage-by-stage guide: Route maps and profiles for all 21 days
Carapaz 'unbelievably strong' - Pidcock
Tom Pidcock was fourth on stage 12, another near-miss, but put in another good ride after getting spat out the back on the Alpe san Pellegrino.
He toldTNT Sports, “When we saw the race was in reach and Trek started to ride Mark [Donovan] also started to ride. I owe it to Mark and Damo [Damien Howson], they helped me back up after I got dropped on that long climb and we went for the stage. But Carapaz was unbelievably strong there. At the top we were pacing it but the way Carapaz went up that climb was pretty impressive.
“That was tough. It was one of those days where now you’ve got three non-GC days were everyone goes all-in, or sees the chance that it could be a full GC day even though most likely it would have been a breakaway day. But it was hard enough that it turned into a GC day.”
Internal politics at UAE
It was interesting watching the response to Carapaz’s decisive attack again. Del Toro went immediately to close it down, but Ayuso sat back. Waiting for Roglic to respond maybe, putting the onus on him? Or was he spent?
Either way there were enough other GC riders to bring the bunch back together, minus Carapaz. Then at the finish line del Toro accelerated to take the bonus seconds, with Ayuso nowhere in sight, and the Mexican glanced over his shoulder as he crossed the line, almost as if looking for his teammate.
Is Ayuso biding his time for the tough, backloaded final week?
Who is leading the Giro d’Italia?
The Giro d’Italia general classification standings shuffled again on stage 10 as race favourite Primoz Roglic, having slipped seven places to 10th overall on a frantic day on the sterrato in Tuscany, got his GC bid back on track and moved up to fifth.
The Slovenian clawed back time on a rain-hampered time trial from Lucca to Pisa, with his major rival Juan Ayuso now a little under a minute ahead of him.
Ayuso’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Isaac del Toro remains in the pink jersey after he took it on Sunday, having made history as the first Mexican to wear the Giro leader’s jersey and the youngest leader of the race this century.
Who is leading the Giro d’Italia? Maglia rosa and general classification standings
GC movers and shakers on stage 11
Carapaz went from 2’10” down on del Toro in ninth place to 1’56” and leapfrogged Brandon McNulty, Giulio Ciccone and Adam Yates for sixth place.
Everyone lost time to del Toro - six seconds for most of the top 10 - but Adam Yates was the worst hit, losing 27 seconds.
Carapaz on 'amazing' win
Here’s what Giro winner and now a four-time Giro stage winner Carapaz had to say.
“For me it’s really... I don’t know. It’s amazing for me, my team. Today I had the confidence, my team work everyday, and the victory is special for my team and my career. After three years in the Giro [when he lost the overall lead to Jai Hindley], I remember this. Now I have the legs. I take the opportunity for the next stage.
“Today is a hard day for everyone, for the GC riders it’s super hard. But for me in the last moment I felt I had the legs. I tried [to attack] one time and [it was enough].”
Asked about his goal of winning the Giro, he said, “The next week is super hard, a lot of mountains, but I think I have a good opportunity, me and my team, and objectives in the next week.”
What happened on stage 11?
A hugely aggressive, thrilling move by EF paid off as Richard Carapaz attacked with 8km to go on stage 12 and held off a slimmed-down field of GC favourites to win his first stage win at the Giro since 2019, when he won the overall.
Isaac del Toro extended his lead in the overall standings to 31 seconds over Juan Ayuso by winning the sprint for second and taking six bonus seconds, while Giulio Ciccone took four for third place, ahead of Tom Pidcock.
Stage 11 results
2) Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates - XRG)
5) Egan Bernal (INEOS Grenadiers)
6) Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain - Victorious)
7) Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates - XRG)
8) Einer Rubio (Movistar)
9) Derek Gee (Israel - Premier Tech)
10) Diego Ulissi (XDS Astana Team), all +10”
Predictions for stage 12
Take your pick of the sprinters in this race, with the flat run-in making this almost guaranteed to be a sprint finish - unless somebody launches a late flyer. Could Taco van der Hoorn or another breakaway specialist look for revenge, after they were caught in the final 2.5km on stage six into Napoli?
Of the pure sprinters Kaden Groves and Casper van Uden have one stage apiece, while Mads Pedersen has three from the more punchy finishes and will likely be circling for more ciclamino points. Olav Kooij is winless in the race so far despite looking promising earlier in the race, but he’s largely been anonymous since his second place on stage four. Paul Magnier looks to be growing into this race and Maikel Zijlaard has had a couple of top-10s, but let’s go with Kaden Groves, who looked phenomenal on stage six and now has his confidence back after a first win of 2025.
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