Giro d’Italia demons purged, can Jai Hindley now threaten cycling superstars Tadej Pogacar and Primoz Roglic?

Jai Hindley successfully broke up a Giro d’Italia duopoly on Sunday in becoming the first rider in five years to secure the maglia rosa who wasn’t either from Ineos Grenadiers or called Richard Carapaz. The Bora-Hansgrohe rider also became the first rider outside cycling’s big three teams – Ineos, Jumbo-Visma and UAE Team Emirates – to win a Grand Tour in the previous nine editions since Carapaz’s Giro win for Movistar in 2019.

Hindley’s commanding 1:18 victory over the Ecuadorian was also proof that, when taken out of Movistar’s fumbling hands, a leadership trident can pay dividends: the Australian started the 105th edition of La Corsa Rosa on level footing with team-mates Wilco Kelderman and Emanuel Buchmann yet emerged from a crowded roster (that also included stage-hunter-cum-Carapaz-tormentor Lennard Kamna) as the standalone central protagonist in a script development you would never see in an episode of The Least Expected Day. Ad/> While Hindley made history as the first Australian to win the Giro, the triumph also came courtesy of a magnificent team effort on the penultimate day of the race when that man Kamna dropped back from the breakaway on the Passo Fedaia to help deliver the killer blow to Carapaz as Hindley danced his way into pink.

Giro d'ItaliaForget Barty and Ashes, 'Australian of the year' is Hindley! – McEwen lauds championAN HOUR AGO Bora-Hansgrohe may well have had high hopes when Hindley joined former team-mate Kelderman and made the jump from Team DSM last winter, they could not have envisioned instant success of the kind the Australian delivered over the roads of Italy. Forget Barty and Ashes, 'Australian of the year' is Hindley! – McEwen lauds champion 'I wasn’t going to let that happen again' —