Max Poole (Picnic-PostNL) almost saw his solid start to the 2025 Giro d’Italia end in a crash on stage 5, as he was forced to abort his sprint into Matera after being clipped by eventual second-place finisher Edoardo Zambanini (Bahrain Victorious).
The Brit produced a great save to finish rubber-side down in 26th after the incident that led to no ramifications for the Italian, with fellow GC hope Romain Bardet completing the lead-out, and he’ll be glad to live to fight another day after impressing in the opening five race days.
“Poole started his sprint from around sixth wheel but unfortunately had to check his effort to avoid a potential crash; with the duo ultimately finishing safely in the peloton,” said Picnic-PostNL.
“We were there in the last kilometre, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sprint the way we wanted to as Max got blocked a bit,” said Bardet, echoing his team’s words.
Amid their struggle for results and points, Picnic-PostNL have mounted a great bounce back at the Giro d’Italia, not only thanks to Casper van Uden’s stage win in Lecce on stage 4, but also Poole’s flying start in the overall.
The Brit finished the fifth day of racing seventh overall, and in an elite club of six riders who don’t already sit more than 30 seconds in arrears of the favourite for the overall, Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), with Poole 26 seconds down on the former Giro winner.
Poole was modest about his successful Grande Partenza, despite finishing in the top 20 of each Albanian stage, and arriving safely, just, on the first two Italian race days.
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“The start in Albania was solid, good to get through and arrive here in Italy,” Poole told Cyclingnews in Alberobello before stage 4.
“With the rest day, it wasn’t such a big deal to start racing hard early on. The Albanian road stages were nice racing days, and the time trial was good, probably better than I expected I could do here.”
Poole, like Van Uden yesterday, assured that the need for points to avoid a relegation battle and stay in cycling’s top division isn’t something that staff at Picnic are overly pushing onto riders, trusting that things will work themselves out now they are into the Grand Tours.
“No, the points thing is not really what we’re focused on. The thing about coming here is that we are fully all in on the Giro,” said Poole.
“That stuff comes with it, obviously it’s there, but it’s not like we’re thinking about it every day. We’re here to race the Giro, and just to focus on that, so we have to do our racing and be confident it will work out.”
The team also have a dual-option for the overall with veteran Grand Tour racer Bardet riding his final three-week race at the Giro.
He’s worse placed than the Brit after five stages, but has proved time and time again over the years just what he can do in the hardest stage races. With two options, the likelihood of the Dutch team carrying the momentum of a first big win in 2025 through to a successful overall placing in Rome looks to be getting stronger.
“We just have to race together. It’s nice to have a couple of different cards to play, but I think we are in a good place,” continued the rider from Scunthorpe.
“We’ve done quite a bit of racing together, so we know how each other works. I think that’s going to be quite important further into the race.”
Poole is racing his third Grand Tour at the 2025 Giro d’Italia, after being the nearly-man at last season’s Vuelta a España, where he finished third on three stages and second once, with that maiden stage win just eluding him.
He wasn’t overly bullish when it came to aiming for a stage win, but did say that the valuable experience from performing well at the Vuelta could help him in his latest campaign. He’s only taken two pro wins so far in his young career, both at the Tour de Lankawai, so a Giro victory would be a huge step up.
“I could take a lot away from last year at the Vuelta, I got a lot of experience and lots of confidence from it,” he said.
“Hopefully I can carry it into here, but it’s a new race, people keep on telling me that the Giro is completely different. But I can definitely take what I learned from 2024 and try to use it here.”
Poole is not only excited about the prospect of a first summit finish into Tagliacozzo on stage 7, but also the gravel stage 9, where he’ll return to the gravel roads of Tuscany after crashing and breaking his collarbone at Strade Bianche only two months ago.
“No, I look forward to going back to gravel. I only got to do half of it in March, so that should be good,” said Poole.
“Then yeah, the uphill finish in a couple days’ time will be the first real tester, I guess, so we’ll see how it goes.”
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