Wiebes Wins the Opener in Ravenna — Then Loses It: Underweight Bike Hands the First Maglia Rosa to Balsamo
The 2026 Giro d'Italia Women opened with one of the most extraordinary twists in recent memory. Lorena Wiebes crossed the line first in Ravenna with the imperious sprint that has become her signature, only to be stripped of the win and the first maglia rosa hours later when post-stage checks found her bike to be 20 grams under the UCI's minimum weight limit. The disqualification handed victory, and the leader's jersey, to Elisa Balsamo.
It was a brutal end to what had looked, on the road, like a routine demonstration of the sport's most reliable fast woman. Wiebes and SD Worx-Protime had controlled the closing kilometres and delivered her to the front with textbook precision. But the commissaires' scales do not care for context, and a margin of just 20 grams was enough to erase the result entirely — a costly reminder of how fine the equipment tolerances have become at the top of the women's peloton.
For Balsamo, promotion to the win is bittersweet but no less significant. The Italian, a former world champion on the road, takes the first pink jersey of her home Grand Tour and the honour of leading the race out of Ravenna. Lidl-Trek will take the jersey gladly, however it arrived, with the sprint-friendly opening days offering further chances to defend it.
The opening stage had already been marked by chaos before the finish. A series of crashes in the nervous, wind-exposed run to the coast splintered the bunch and brought down several riders, with British young talent Cat Ferguson among those forced to abandon after going down hard. The early loss of a rider tipped as a future star cast a shadow over a day that should have belonged purely to the sprinters.
With the GC favourites — Demi Vollering, Marlen Reusser and Anna van der Breggen chief among them — content to stay safe and upright on a day that offered them nothing, the overall battle remains firmly in waiting. The mountains that will decide this Giro are still days away, and the heavyweights kept their powder dry while the sprinters and the commissaires made the headlines.
For now, though, the story is the jersey that changed hands off the road. Wiebes leaves the opening day with nothing to show for a winning ride, Balsamo inherits the pink she will be determined to keep, and the 2026 Giro d'Italia Women has announced itself with drama no preview could have predicted.