When the Giro d'Italia organisers decided to return to the Colle delle Finestre after seven years of absence, they were surely hoping for a final-day showdown. The tendency of modern Grand Tours to be decided well before stage 20 made it a risk to include the iconic climb so late, but fate has smiled on the Giro, and it looks like the race organisers will get the epic Finestre battle they were hoping for on Saturday.
With just one mountain stage remaining, the GC is finely poised, with Giro newbie Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) leading the overall by just 43 seconds ahead of Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), who has been attacking the Mexican at every opportunity, though he's valiantly held on so far.
Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) are within two and a half minutes of the race lead, and even those who are over three minutes down could still move up, such is the difficulty of stage 20.
Stage 20, the final 'real' road stage of this year's Giro, is centred around the Colle delle Finestre. The stage won't finish on the climb, but it's the Cima Coppi of the race, the headline of the stage, and really where everyone expects all the action to unfold.
The stage will start in Verrès, and the first 60km are flat before the category 4 climb to Corio (6.5km at 3.7%) gently kicks off the climbing proceedings. The road then continues upwards towards the Colle del Lys, which is 13.7km at 4.2%. From the descent of that climb, there's then about 30km of flat in the valley, all running towards the daunting Colle delle Finestre – more on that shortly.
From the top of the Finestre, the peloton will descend just over 10km, and then the road kicks up again, with a 16km climb to the finish in Sestrière. Though long, it's only a category 3 climb with an average gradient of 3.8%, so whilst that final ramp will seal the standings, it's the Finestre where things will really be decided.
The Finestre itself is a beast of a climb, and as we explored in a special feature before the Giro, it's become a modern legend of the race, only included for the first time 20 years ago but already synonymous with several legendary rides.
The climb is 18.5km long, and it just goes up and up and up, taking the race up to 2,178m above sea level, the highest point in this year's Giro, with an average gradient of 9.2% and ramps of up to 14%. A climb with those statistics would be pretty tough anyway, but the Finestre has an extra sting in its tail, as the final 8km is totally unpaved, taking the riders onto rough gravel. If the gradients weren't hard enough, the surface will be leg-sapping.
As we saw in 2018 with Chris Froome, and 2015 with Alberto Contador, the unique challenge of the Colle delle Finestre, and its positioning in the final week, can lead to some truly epic battles and huge efforts, with riders making a last-ditch attempt on the fearsome ascent to save or change their Giro. UAE Team Emirates-XRG may have controlled this week fairly well so far for Del Toro and the pink jersey, but even they won't be immune to the chaos and unpredictability that Finestre brings.
View from the peloton
Chris Froome in action in action on the gravel of the Colle delle Finestre on stage 19 at the 2018Giro d'Italia (Image credit: Getty Images)
There are a few riders in the peloton who rode the Colle delle Finestre the last time it was in the Giro, in 2018, and a few DSs who were there, too. Richard Carapaz was there, and finished second on the stage, whilst Simon Yates was also there, having a very different experience – he started the stage in pink, and ended it by losing 39 minutes to Froome.
Plenty of the top 10, however, have never raced this climb before, many of them so young that they were far away from being professionals the last time the Giro climbed Finestre.
Everyone, whether they've ridden it before, have good memories or terrible ones, has been asked about Finestre this week. Yates won't be drawn into speculation about redemption, whilst Carapaz said, "I don't think everyone knows how hard it is". Del Toro, who was 14 when Froome went on his famous attack, thinks "it will be magical for me" to visit the iconic climb.
One rider who has no experience of his own, but will have some good guidance from the car, is Derek Gee. His Israel-Premier Tech DS Sam Bewley was a domestique for Simon Yates on that painful day back in 2018, and knows more than many how the gravel climbs can "flip the Giro on its head".
"I was in the team with Simon, so I was fucked at that point," Bewley recalled of his last ride up Finestre.
"I'd had a big couple of weeks riding on the front, we'd had the jersey for like 13 or 14 days up until that day, and then we obviously lost it when Simon cracked and Froomey went on that big ride. That climb's a monster. It's an hour long for the best guys, so I probably took about an hour and a half to get up it that year."
Back in 2018, Chris Froome's 80km solo ride was fairly outlandish, but now, advances in cycling nutrition and just racing styles in general have made those long moves much more common, but is that what we're expecting on Saturday?
The GC gaps were bigger going into the Finestre stage in 2018, compared to this year, which could steer tactics away from such big moves, as riders don't need to claim back so much time to move up the GC, but Bewley still thinks the nature of the climbs lends itself to going on the offensive early.
"Inevitably, that stage is set up for a long-range attack, so I think it's going to happen," he said. "Sestrière, the final climb, is not so hard, it's more just a valley road that gets a bit steeper, so Finestre is the climb that's going to have the biggest impact. I think we can expect a long-range move from somebody there, but it will just depend on who that is and what the situation on the GC is when we get to the bottom of it."
Bewley's rider Derek Gee may be started the stage 2:27 down on the race lead, but history has shown that bigger deficits than that can be turned around on the Finestre, and there's nothing to say that Gee, the steady rider who has suffered on the more punchy climbs, couldn't be the one to take it up from a distance.
Whilst Yates isn't entertaining the idea of redemption on Saturday, his former teammate Bewley is certainly thinking about writing some better memories on the roads to Sestrière.
"It's still a little scar in my career," he said of the Finestre climb. "I thought I was never going to win a Grand Tour as a teammate, and then I thought it was going to maybe happen that year, and when I retired from cycling I kind of accepted that [he wouldn't win a Grand Tour with a team], but who knows, maybe we'll win it with Derek."
Climbs
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Stage 20 profile for 2025 Giro d'Italia(Image credit: RCS Sport)
Colle de Lys profile(Image credit: RCS Sport/Giro d'Italia)
Matilda is an NCTJ-qualified journalist based in the UK who joined Cyclingnews in March 2025. Prior to that, she worked as the Racing News Editor at GCN, and extensively as a freelancer contributing to Cyclingnews, Cycling Weekly, Velo, Rouleur, Escape Collective, Red Bull and more. She has reported from many of the biggest events on the calendar, including the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France Femmes, Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. She has particular experience and expertise in women's cycling, and women's sport in general. She is a graduate of modern languages and sports journalism.
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