That was silly to write UAE Team Emirates-XRG off, wasn’t it. Without their leader due to illness, and losing not one, not two but three teammates in stage two’s mass pile-up, the narrative that was building and taking hold was that this Giro d’Italia was cursed for the Emirati team.
They wouldn’t be challenging Jonas Vingegaard in the GC, and they wouldn’t be picking up stage win after stage win as they tend to do in each of the three Grand Tours. If it was any other team without their four best riders, that portrayal would stack up. It’d make complete sense. But UAE don’t do normal things.
The team led by Mauro Gianetti are a team full of race-winning talent, each of them schooled or finessed in what is modern day cycling’s most successful winning academy. Its richest, too. And that matters, because money buys and develops success. They only have a handful of riders left in the Giro, but four of those five riders (sorry, Mikkel Bjerg, you’re the one we’re leaving out) would be leaders at just about any other team in the race. A depleted and reduced squad, yes, but still a powerful quintet that ought to be winning stages.
Jhonatan Narváez won stage four of this year's Giro d'Italia (Image credit: Zac Williams/SWpix.com
And so it proved on stage four, the race’s first day in Italy after a three-day excursion in Bulgaria that will be remembered for the crashes and the rain more than the Paul Magnier sprint domination. Movistar took hold of the stage, strangling it at the halfway point on the long two category climb of Cozzo Tunno, and in doing so shedding the peloton of its sprinters. Some of GC men, too, including Egan Bernal. It was like the Movistar of old, from long, long ago.
Ostensibly, the Spanish team were working for Orluis Aular, but the way they rode was a vote of confidence in their overall leader Enric Mas. In a thinning field of GC riders, that was noteworthy. But Movistar, Mas and Aular wouldn’t reap the benefits of their work. UAE would. Bernal recovered and came back to the peloton, and in the final two kilometres in Cosenza, UAE’s Jan Christen attacked from the 40-man front group and stretched out a gap.
The aim wasn’t for the Swiss to win – though it’s true if he did he would have taken the pink jersey off Guillermo Thomas Silva – but rather it was a move designed to prompt the many dogs in the fight to chase the hare. To force them into sprinting much earlier, to weaken them. To set up his teammate Jhonatan Narváez, probably the fastest one left in the group.
It was a plan devised in the last hour of racing, according to the team’s manager Joxean Fernández Matxin. “He came to the car to ask about the possibility of trying in the last two kilometres,” Matxin revealed afterwards. “We said OK, but remain with Jonathan in the final.” He did, sort of. Narváez, as well as praising his young companion, later said the 21-year-old “needs to learn how to race”.
(Image credit: Zac Williams/ SWpix.com)
What he did in Cosenza was pretty damn good, though. As Aular, Giulio Ciccone, Ben Turner and others went off in search of Christen, Narváez snuck onto their back wheel. By the time Christen was caught, Narváez was able to pop out on the left, open his legs up for the first time, and power to the line. Aular and Movistar deserved the win for their efforts, but Narváez and Christen played the smartest and most astute tactics in the final. Narváez scored the victory, and Christen, riding his debut Grand Tour, moves up to second overall. Ciccone is now in pink.
“Obviously this victory is for my teammates,” Narváez beamed afterwards. “We had a big crash on stage two and we had all been working for a while to come here in good condition. We were good in stage two, but to finally take the victory today I think we are all happy now.”
With their vast wealth and near-daily victories, very few people will be feeling pity towards UAE’s misfortune immediately before and in the first few days of the Giro. More sympathy will be levelled at Movistar for how they came close to pulling off what would have been a merited victory for Aular. The Venezuelan had to settle for second instead.
Yet one has to admire UAE’s resilience and strength. They’ve not got João Almeida, everyone’s pre-race pick to rival Vingegaard, and neither have they got Adam Yates, their Plan B. Marc Soler and Jay Vine, two riders who would have been predicted to win a stage or two each, are also at home, nursing injuries and wounds.
But in Christen, Narváez, Bjerg, Igor Arrieta and António Morgado, UAE have enough talent and strength to make their mark on this race. The 2026 Giro is unlikely to be their finest Grand Tour, but they’re going to do more than just salvage a consolidation stage victory. UAE have the fewest riders in the race, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate with them being irreversibly weakened. There’s 17 stages left – who knows how many will go the way of the sport’s best team.
