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  "description": "As told exclusively to Escape, here's the Italian champion's account of winning last year's Giro d'Italia.",
  "path": "/perfectly-imperfect-elisa-longo-borghini-reflects-on-her-2025-giro-victory/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-25T20:07:30.000Z",
  "site": "https://escapecollective.com",
  "tags": [
    "stage going through the Simplon Pass and ending in Domodossola",
    "Subscribe now",
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  "textContent": "Getty Images courtesy UAE Team ADQ, @facepeeters\n\n__A year ago, Elisa Longo Borghini won the second of her back-to-back Giro d'Italia Women titles. As she gets set to make her defense in the 2026 edition – which starts this Saturday May 30 – here is Longo Borghini's first-person account of her path to the 2025 title. This as-told-to is based on an interview with Abby Mickey for__ Escape Collective __that took place during the offseason.__\n\n## An introduction to pink\n\nI have this image in my mind of the 2005 Giro. There was a stage going through the Simplon Pass and ending in Domodossola, which is 20 km from my home. I went, and I saw Nicole Brändli in pink. For me, it was stunning. I was like, ‘OK, in my life, I would like to be like her’. I'd love to be in this environment, racing up the mountain passes and trying to fight for pink.\n\nTo be honest, I think my love for the Giro comes from my childhood. It's true that women's cycling didn't have the big echo that it has now, but it's also true that when I was a child, I always followed cycling, women's and men's, and I always asked my parents to bring me to stages of the Giro, even if maybe I was the only one there, watching the ladies who were riding.\n\nI had this drive in my soul all the time. In the past years, I've been chasing this pink jersey for so long. I've been so close and yet so far. Either super far from the pink or just some seconds behind the pink jersey, for many years. My first Giro d’Italia was in 2011, and from that year on, I only skipped the Giro once, because I was injured. Imagine how many times I was dreaming about the pink jersey. Just getting to wear it for the first time, after the first stage of the 2020 Giro, was a huge emotion.\n\nStage 5: Before.\n\nIt's a long love story with the Giro, and sometimes it's also a hate story, because I think everyone or everything that you love a lot, you also hate, a little bit.\n\nIn 2024, when I finally won the jersey, I wasn’t going to give it away to anyone. I probably could die, but I'm going home with this jersey.\n\nI've learned that I can be a tough cookie to beat, especially when it comes to a mind game. I didn't know I could be so determined and so eager to win something, especially in the last stage. I went into it, and I was actually very, very calm. I felt like I had to be a surgeon. I had to be precise and sharp, and to cut when it was needed.\n\nLotte Kopecky was my target, and I was the arrow. I knew exactly what I had to do. The plan was not to lose any seconds and to beat her. I tried to make it as easy as it could be. So I had only one goal: to stay with Kopecky and beat her. Easy to say, hard to do, but that was it.\n\nAt the end of the day, I'm just Elisa, as you know. OK, I won the Giro, but I also would like to stay who I am, to be a good rider in general, to do some one-day races, because they really pump me up.\n\n## Italian, through and through\n\nMoving from Lidl-Trek to UAE Team ADQ in 2025 was not an easy choice, but I needed a new challenge. If I look back right now, I think I made the right choice.\n\n### This post is for subscribers only\n\nBecome a member to get access to all content\n\nSubscribe now",
  "title": "‘Perfectly imperfect’: Elisa Longo Borghini reflects on her 2025 Giro victory",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-25T20:07:33.242Z"
}