Twenty-one facts about the 21-stage 2021 Giro d’Italia

1) Fourteen teams won stages. Ineos Grenadiers claimed four, Qhubeka-Assos earned three stages over five days, and Lotto-Soudal and Bahrain-Victorious grabbed two.
2) Only one true wildcard team took a stage win. Alpecin-Fenix was an automatic selection but Italian ProTeam EOLO-Kometa was one of three other teams given an invitation. Its man Lorenzo Fortunato conquered Zoncolan to claim Stage 14. Fortunato was also the best wild card rider on GC at 16th.
3) Lotto-Soudal was left with only two riders by Milan. Only two teams, Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert and Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè, didn’t lose any riders over the three weeks.
4) Riders from breakaways won 11 of the 19 road stages.
5) Riders from 11 nations won stages.
6) Italians won seven stages, including three in a row.
7) Geoffrey Bouchard (AG2R- Citroën) is only the fourth Frenchman to win the Giro mountains classification and the first since Laurent Fignon in 1984. Bouchard won the 2019 Vuelta a España mountains classification as well.

8) Two teams, EF Education-Nippo and Israel Start-up Nation, wore one-off special kits for the Giro.
9) All three podium men won stages, the first time since 2017 with winner Tom Dumoulin, runner-up Nairo Quintana and third place Vincenzo Nibali.
10) Like Thomas De Gendt in 2012, John Gadret in 2011 and David Arroyo in 2010, Damiano Caruso was the surprise podium package of the race, coming second, his best Grand Tour result in 14 attempts, all of which he finished. Caruso has been in Grand Tour top-10s three other times, and now has top-10 placings in all three races. He was the only Italian in the top-14.

11) The last rider on GC was Riccardo Milani of Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert at +5:35:49. From 1946 to 1951, the Giro awarded a black jersey to the last rider.
12) George Bennett (New Zealand/Jumbo-Visma) had a funny ol’ Giro. He carried a musette bag collected at the top of Passo Giau for the last 18 km of Stage 16. The Kiwi also squabbled with Gianluca Brambilla near the end of Stage 12, rode up the Zoncolan twice in appreciation of teammate Edoardo Affini’s work on the day and finished 11th.
13) For the second consecutive edition, the Giro was bookended with individual time trials that Filippo Ganna won.
14) For the second consecutive edition, the top-3 were new to the Giro podium.
15) South Americans have won three of the last eight Giros. There have been South Americans on the podium of seven of the last nine Giros.
16) For the third time since the Giro re-established the youth classification in 2007, the race winner and the youth classification were the same, with all three double jersey winners—Egan Bernal, Tao Geoghegan Hart and Nairo Quintana—coming in the last eight years.
17) Sky-Ineos Grenadiers has won three of the last four editions.
18) This was two-time champion Vincenzo Nibali’s tenth finished Giro d’Italia.
19) Antoine Duchesne was Canada’s sole representative in his Giro debut and the 12th Canadian to ever race the Giro. Now he’s finished all three Grand Tours. Other nations with a lone rider were the Czech Republic, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Norway, Slovakia and Ukraine. Eritrea had three riders.

20) Peter Sagan claimed his first Giro points classification on his second attempt. He’s won the Tour de France’s green points jersey seven times but has yet to take the Vuelta’s points title.
21) Attila Valter (Groupama-FDJ) became the first Hungarian to wear the pink jersey on Stage 6 and finshed 15th. Last year, the Giro was supposed to start with three stages in Hungary, but the COVID-19 pandemic led to cancellation and a start in Sicily.