{"id":166838,"date":"2025-06-08T05:39:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-08T05:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/166838\/"},"modified":"2025-06-08T05:39:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T05:39:11","slug":"i-had-no-idea-chris-harper-eager-to-share-spotlight-after-simon-yates-banishes-giro-ditalia-demons-cycling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/166838\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I had no idea\u2019: Chris Harper eager to share spotlight after Simon Yates banishes Giro d\u2019Italia demons | Cycling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian cyclist Chris Harper is yet to properly soak up the ride of his life and first Grand Tour stage victory by watching a replay of his long-range and daring solo attack over the Colle delle Finestre and up the Sestri\u00e8re. But the 30-year-old climber won\u2019t have to look too hard to find highlights in the future after his ride was a major subplot as the decisive story of the 2025 Giro d\u2019Italia unfolded behind him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Harper arrived in Albania for the opening three stages of the Giro with ambitions to prove himself as a general classification contender. A top-10 placing by the time the three-week race finished in Rome was the realistic goal. But a bout of illness hit the Team Jayco AlUla rider on the second rest day and Harper had to lift himself in the third week just to turn his focus toward chasing a stage win.<\/p>\n

After working his way into the major breakaways that were all chased down on successive days, Harper thought his race was all but done as the Giro landed in Verr\u00e8s for the penultimate day and queen\u2019s stage with more than 4,500m of climbing over 205km to come. Yet almost by accident, Harper found himself in another break<\/a>, felt he was on a good day and with a healthy dose of what he calls \u201cwhite line fever\u201d set off to conquer one of the most brutal climbs in Italy.<\/p>\n

Further back, Harper\u2019s former teammate Simon Yates, now at Team Visma-Lease a Bike, was dropping Isaac del Toro in the maglia rosa and second-placed Richard Carapaz on the Finestre. As Yates blew the race wide open, his remaining challengers for pink did little more than look at each other<\/a>, and the former Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a winner became Harper\u2019s main concern.<\/p>\n

Chris Harper rides away on the Colle delle Finestre on his way to victory on stage 20 of the 2025 Giro d\u2019Italia. Photograph: Luca Bettini\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know too much about what was going on behind me, I had no idea,\u201d Harper tells Guardian Australia while enjoying his post-race recovery on Santorini. \u201cI just knew that Simon was solo and that he was putting quite a bit of time into del Toro and Carapaz. On the Finestre, my sports director said, \u2018Simon\u2019s about five and a half minutes behind,\u2019 and then they said, \u2018Oh, but he\u2019s two minutes in front of the other GC guys\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my head I knew he was riding for pink but that also made me more nervous because I knew he was going to push full gas to the line to take as much time as he could. I\u2019ve seen him on a good day and I know what he can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harper and Yates rode together on Jayco AlUla in 2023 and 2024 with the Australian often his teammate\u2019s last support in the mountains, including at last year\u2019s Tour de France. Rather than feeling overshadowed by the story of Yates banishing his demons from the 2018 Giro<\/a> when he cracked on much the same stage as Chris Froome took the maglia rosa away from him, Harper is almost as pleased for his friend as for his own breakthrough triumph. The dual celebrations at the end of stage 20 at Sestri\u00e8re were a reminder that one of the joys of road cycling can be having more than one winner on the same day.<\/p>\n

Team Jayco AlUla\u2019s rider Chris Harper celebrates his first grand tour stage win. Photograph: Luca Bettini\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI was quite nervous once I pulled away alone, especially when the radio said \u2018Simon\u2019s just caught up with Wout [van Aert] and Wout\u2019s chasing now\u2019,\u201d Harper says. \u201cThey\u2019re pretty calm on the radio but you get a sense from the tone in their voice what\u2019s happening, you realise how nervous they are. I knew if I blew up, it would be quite easy for Simon to bring back a lot of time on me. So I just paced myself so I\u2019d have a bit left in the tank for the last two or three kilometres.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I got to the last kilometre, they just said, \u2018You\u2019re going to win it, enjoy it, take a moment\u2019. The Finestra is quite a famous climb so it\u2019s definitely a nice one to win. I haven\u2019t actually watched the race, so I want to go back and watch it just to see what Simon was doing in the GC group as well. He was my teammate and I worked with him a lot, so it\u2019ll be nice to sit down and actually watch the stage, soak it in a bit more as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI was so happy for Simon and it was nice to see him at the finish line and be able to share that moment together. All of it wrapped up into one nice day. It was like all our bad luck went away at the same time, and it was just the perfect day for both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The victory was Harper\u2019s first since winning a stage and eventually the general classification at the Tour of Japan in 2019, a year before he joined the world tour for the first time with Team Jumbo-Visma. With a first taste of personal success for six years, Harper wants to chase more stages while continuing to explore what he is capable of on GC again at this year\u2019s Vuelta.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t even think about it,\u201d he says of his celebration in Sestri\u00e8re. \u201cMy manager made a joke that I celebrated twice, once before the finish line and then after I crossed the line. I haven\u2019t won a lot so I don\u2019t have a lot of practice. It didn\u2019t hurt to get two celebrations in the one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian cyclist Chris Harper is yet to properly soak up the ride of his life and first Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-166838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114646139707940697","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}