Three wins in eight stages of racing – figures usually reserved for elite sprinters and generational talents – and Jhonatan Narváez is turning out to be the man of this year’s Giro d’Italia. Rather than being subdued by three of his UAE Team Emirates-XRG colleagues abandoning on stage two, Narváez has been liberated to express his plethora of talents. Could he now be the first non-sprinter to win the race’s points classification since Joaquim Rodríguez in 2012?
At the race’s halfway stage, Narváez sits second and 19 points behind the current wearer of the ciclamino jersey, Soudal Quick-Step’s Paul Magnier, having picked up another 25 points for winning stage 11’s leg-sapping day from Porcari to Chiavari, edging out Movistar’s Enric Mas in a two-up finale.
He didn’t infiltrate the breakaway until two hours had passed but when he was finally at the front of the race there was a sense of inevitability about what would happen next. Even though there were big climbs in his way and plenty of mountain goats for company – Mas, Chris Harper and Aleksandr Vlasov – Narváez is in career-best form, a man who is able to do just about everything.
His first victory in Fermo on stage eight came courtesy of him attacking 10km from the line – a shrewd tactical move – and that triumph came just four days after he won a sprint in Cosenza. His skillset is varied, and the momentum he has is powering him onto a win every few days. The GC race is hotting up after stage 10’s time trial shake-up, with multiple riders all staking a claim to being Jonas Vingegaard’s closest challenger in the final 10 days of racing. But it’s Narváez for whom this Giro currently belongs – at least from a spectacle standpoint.
He announced himself on the international stage during the Covid edition of the 2020 Giro with a fine stage win from the break, but didn’t repeat the feat until the opening stage of the 2024 race when he won in Torino and wore pink for a day. It was around that time that it was first reported that Narváez would be swapping Ineos Grenadiers for UAE, a transfer that, if rumours are to be believed, will be reversed this coming winter. If that’s to be the case, UAE are about to lose a rider who they’ve turned into one of the most complete packages in the peloton, and Netcompany-Ineos are about to welcome back a much-improved old friend. They said adiós to a solid domestique, and could be saying hola de nuevo to a regular race winner.
Image credit: Zac Williams /SWpix.com
In his time with UAE Narváez has won the Tour Down Under, proved a race-changing domestique for Tadej Pogačar at the Tour de France (how he teed up the Slovenian at the foot of the Hautacam was one of 2025’s most impressive racing moments) and now he’s won three stages and counting in this year’s Giro, his first race since suffering several vertebrae compression fractures in Australia in January. Are UAE really sure they are willing to sanction the 29-year-old’s exit?
One man who’d very much like to see Narváez’s winning streak come to an end is Magnier. The Frenchman, who counts two stage wins so far, can look forward to two near-guaranteed bunch sprints in the coming period: stage 15’s finale in Milan, and the final day in action in Rome. Win both of them, or finish towards the very front, and he’ll accumulate up to 100 ciclamino points. There are another three stages, including the next two, that could also be decided by the sprinters – but if raced differently, Narváez will also fancy his chances. Ditto for stage 18, which comes a day after a trip to the ski station of Andalo in the Dolomites that you can’t also rule Narváez out of on current form. So you see Magnier’s problem in not only keeping Lidl-Trek’s Jonathan Milan (54 points behind) at bay in the hunt for the points classification, but also Narváez.
“Enric Mas was the strongest in the climb and I knew I had to play my game,” Narváez said afterwards, celebrating becoming the Ecuadorian with the most stage wins (five) in the race. “He is stronger than me on the climbs but I remembered a book I was reading which said: ‘If you don’t have your game, just make your own game.’ You will never see Michael Phelps running because he’s a specialist in the [swimming] pool. And I just tried to defend myself uphill.” He more than did not and then used his turn of speed at the finish to deny Mas. In these sorts of stages – undulating, punchy, Classics-esque with a fast finish – Narváez is proving to be far superior than everyone else.
“He is an example of resilience, good mentality, professionalism and the love of cycling,” his team boss Mauro Gianetti beamed. “After his accident he was struggling a lot but he always had in his mind that he’d come back in time for the Giro and to show his value. From this terrible crash in the Tour Down Under he took the opportunity to improve in the future and learn something from life.” What the Giro has learned is that Narváez is the man of the race.
