Potenza delivers the craziest finale: stage win for Arrieta, Maglia Rosa for Eulálio

If Alfred Hitchcock had scripted the finale of the Praia a Mare – Potenza stage at the 2026 Giro d’Italia, it would have been hard to make it any more thrilling or adrenaline-fuelled than what actually unfolded. Credit goes to two remarkably resilient protagonists: Igor Arrieta (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious).

But let’s take it step by step: with 50 kilometres to go, at the summit of the demanding Montagna Grande di Viggiano, it quickly became clear that the stage victory would be fought between those two riders. And so it proved — only with complete chaos unfolding in between. After a day spent battling relentless rain, Arrieta crashed with 12 km to go, seemingly opening the gates of paradise for Eulálio. But the Portuguese rider also hit the ground 5 km from the finish in Potenza, meaning the pair found themselves reunited at the entrance to the Lucanian capital — bruised, bloodied and exhausted. The finale turned even more absurd when Arrieta took a wrong turn with 2 km remaining: surely, this time, it was over. Instead, Eulálio cracked badly in the final kilometre, destroyed by fatigue and the effects of his crash. Arrieta clawed his way back and swept past him in the final 50 metres, claiming one of the most unbelievable stage wins in recent Giro memory.

In tears from disbelief and exhaustion, Arrieta secured the biggest victory of his young career, while Eulálio found some consolation — and quite a significant one at that — by taking the Maglia Rosa. Because amid all the madness behind, Giulio Ciccone found himself completely isolated after the climb to Viggiano, with nobody left to help him in the chase. He tried to limit the damage on his own for a while, before eventually surrendering. After all, he had already fulfilled his dream.

Pouring Rain

The stage was defined by a relentless downpour, which gradually drained the riders of energy and left them soaked and freezing kilometre after kilometre. As expected, the opening hour was raced at a furious pace, until — approaching the Prestieri KOM — a group of 12 riders finally managed to break clear: Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious), Manuele Tarozzi (Bardiani CSF 7 Saber), Lorenzo Milesi, Einer Rubio (Movistar), Ben Turner (Netcompany INEOS), Gianmarco Garofoli (Soudal Quick-Step), Victor Campenaerts (Visma | Lease a Bike), Igor Arrieta, Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Martin Tjøtta (Uno-X Mobility), Christian Scaroni and Thomas Silva (XDS Astana). Later, a determined Darren Rafferty (EF Education-EasyPost) also bridged across.

A severely depleted Lidl-Trek, with many riders dropped alongside Jonathan Milan, managed to keep the gap at around 2’30” for several kilometres — partly because several riders in the breakaway had genuine ambitions of taking the Maglia Rosa. But everything changed on the climb to Montagna Grande di Viggiano (6.6 km at 9.2%), when Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe began setting the pace, thinning out the peloton before noticeably easing once over the summit.

Up front, meanwhile, Arrieta and Eulálio dropped everyone else and prepared to write one of the wildest finales the Giro has ever seen. Behind them, the gap to the peloton — from which more riders later attacked — ballooned from two minutes to seven in just 50 kilometres, despite Giulio Ciccone’s efforts to limit the damage and honour the Maglia Rosa.

At the top of the standings now sits Eulálio, only the third Portuguese rider ever to wear the Maglia Rosa, after Acácio da Silva and João Almeida. And with the terrain ahead, he may even dream of keeping it beyond Blockhaus. For Bahrain Victorious — on the very day the team commemorated five years since the late Gino Mäder’s stage win in Ascoli Piceno — it marks their first-ever Maglia Rosa. Fate, perhaps