Grand Tour sprints are unforgiving situations. Elia Viviani (Lotto) knows this all too well. The 36-year-old Italian sprinter has been around the block — he’s won nine stages at three week races, five at his home race, the Giro d’Italia, one at the Tour de France and three at the Vuelta a España. On stage nine of the latter, he came closer to ending his Grand Tour drought than any other point in the last six years since that stage win of the 2019 Tour.
After Viviani missed out to a rampaging Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) at the finish in Zaragoza, he was pained at how close he'd come: “It’s painful. You’re looking at the [finish] line in front of you, and you’re feeling that it is [getting] closer and closer, but then when there’s a guy like Philipsen around, it’s never over until the line. A big chance was lost.”
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Then the news came through that his result wouldn’t stand. He was relegated from second to 105th for an irregular sprint. Viviani, a veteran of the bunch, has been navigating finishes like these all his career on the road and also on the track, where he has an Olympic gold medal on his palmarès. He thrives in this sort of chaos. Speaking of the messy sprint before knowing he had been relegated, he said: “There was a bit of confusion of where to start, to open the door on the left or the right. I would have preferred to go on the right. When you look back on a stage like this afterwards, you can approach it in a hundred different modes. But when you are there, this is the feeling. When I went, I just went and went to the line. I hear that Philipsen is on the barriers and I didn’t have any idea to close him – this is not how I win races.”
The rules are there to protect riders and reduce the prospect of crashes in the finales of races. Relegation or not, Viviani was at the top end of a top bike race again. There’s something inspiring about someone, who after a number of years of struggle, once again finds himself jostling at the head of a Grand Tour sprint. At the age of 36, he still lives in the liminal space between fading glory and an unmistakable hunger — that desire to find one more triumph among the giants like Philipsen. In Turin’s chaotic Vuelta opener, he was there: elbows out, wheels spinning, heart hammering, finishing in fourth. In Zaragoza he was second – until he wasn't.
The Italian is in the twilight of his career. He joined Lotto on a lifeline in February, seized it with unmistakable grace, and became a tutor for their youthful squad. As a reward he was handed his first Grand Tour spot since 2021. Despite not yet earning a stage win, the Belgian team have looked keen and have been present at the front of the race, especially in stage five's team time trial where they only finished 0:27 behind UAE Team Emirates-XRG.
Grand Tours are not easy, Viviani knows this: “You’ve seen in the last eight days that I have been really happy to be here. At the same time I have also been struggling, which is the truth, but when you go really close to a big goal like this, it means you are a serious athlete at 36-years-old trying to beat the best sprinter in the world and I am happy to be there.”
We are in the romantic dusk of a sprinter’s journey. Whether this will be his final chance at a Grand Tour title will largely depend on whether or not he's kept on in the expected Lotto-Intermarché-Wanty merger. That discussion will come later – right now the Italian's mixing it with the Vuelta's best sprinters, a race that is never the most forgiving of Grand Tours for the fast men; they'll have to survive a number of tricky stages before their next shot at glory.
But the image lingers, despite his demotion to 105th: an ageing athlete whose fire still burns, even as it flickers. In these swift, breathless moments at the finish straight, relegation or not, he remains a testament to perseverance — not just racing the other sprinters, but racing the clock itself.
