Covi's Perfectly Timed Punch: How Jayco-AlUla's Italian Climber Cracked the Giro del Veneto

A rider who waited all season finally got the moment he needed — and he timed it to perfection. On the cobbled run-up to Vicenza's Santuario di Monte Berico, Alessandro Covi launched his sprint from well over 300 metres out, held off a furious late charge from Anthon Charmig, and crossed the line as winner of the 89th Giro del Veneto on October 14. It was a statement win in the dying embers of the Italian road season, and it snapped a drought that had stretched back to a stage of the 2025 Vuelta a Asturias.

The 27-year-old Italian from Jayco-AlUla had flirted with results all year — solid in the hills, respectable in the mountains — but a victory had refused to come. On a lumpy 167-kilometre route from Verona to Vicenza built almost entirely around a local circuit featuring six ascents of Monte Berico, the race handed Covi the exact terrain he needed.

The Course That Selects Its Own Winner

Six laps of Monte Berico sounds almost monotonous on paper, but that 1.1-kilometre climb averaging 7.5% (with punchy sections steeper than 10%) is a reliable eliminator. Each pass over the top reduced the front group, shaking loose sprinters and pure climbers alike. By the final circuit, the race had distilled itself down to around 30 GC-capable punchers — exactly the condensed finale this kind of Italian one-day race is designed to produce.

The Giro del Veneto sits inside the UCI ProSeries, below WorldTour level, but it draws significant WorldTour firepower every October as teams wind down their seasons in the Veneto hills. This edition was no different.

UAE Controls, McNulty Attacks — and Neither Is Enough

UAE Team Emirates-XRG spent the majority of the final 50 kilometres in full control mode, with Pavel Sivakov setting tempo and then World Champion Brandon McNulty turning the screw on the penultimate Monte Berico ascent. McNulty launched a fierce acceleration that shattered the peloton into a long, thin line — an impressive display of power from the American rainbow jersey holder — but he could not get clear.

With McNulty's solo move neutralised, Swiss pair Fabio Christen and Marc Hirschi spotted an opportunity and slipped off the front together. Their gap grew to nearly ten seconds before the bunch — still with UAE heavily represented — hunted them back with six kilometres remaining. By then, the race was heading for the decisive final climb with Benoît Cosnefroy as UAE's designated finisher, the Frenchman protected by McNulty's blistering pace-setting all the way to the steepest ramps.

The Launch That Won It

Covi's instinct was to go early. Rather than wait for the standard sprint to unfold from 150 metres, he accelerated from well beyond 300 metres to go — an exceptionally long drive for a finish this steep. It is a tactic that suits the Monte Berico ramp precisely: the gradient is steep enough to slow any chasers, but not so steep that an early attacker is guaranteed to blow up before the line.

Charmig, who had finished second in the Gran Piemonte just six days earlier, launched his customary late charge from further back but ran out of road centimetres short of Covi's wheel. Cosnefroy had to settle for third despite McNulty's locomotive work on his behalf. Five Italians ended up inside the top ten, including Christian Scaroni (5th), Alessandro Fancellu (6th), Ludovico Crescioli (9th) and Simone Velasco (10th) — a domestic showing that will please Italian cycling fans heading into the off-season.

For Jayco-AlUla, the victory is the team's second of 2026, following Mauro Schmid's Tour de France stage earlier in the year. Covi's move from UAE Team Emirates — where he spent six seasons — to Jayco-AlUla at the start of 2026 had yet to produce a win until today.

Reading the Tactical Layers

This race also told a broader story about team tactics in the era of protected sprinters. McNulty is World Champion on the road, carrying enormous prestige, yet UAE deployed him as a pure domestique to set up Cosnefroy. That decision — arguably the right one given Cosnefroy's form — ultimately failed, but it underlines how heavily the top teams now invest in tactical sacrifice to deliver their anointed finishers. Covi's opportunism cut right through that calculation.

Charmig's back-to-back runner-up finishes (Gran Piemonte and now Giro del Veneto) are worth noting too. The young Dane has shown consistent late-season form for Uno-X Mobility and will be one to watch when the 2027 campaign opens.

What This Means for Your Riding

Covi's early sprint on a 7.5% gradient is a textbook example of a strategy that translates directly to your local group rides and sportives: on a steep but short climb, commit early rather than waiting for a sprint that never comes. If you launch at 300 metres on a 7–9% ramp, physics works in your favour — chasers have to accelerate uphill against gravity rather than simply match your flat-road speed. Practise prolonged threshold efforts into short punchy climbs in training to build the specific power endurance this demands. The Veneto hills just proved the approach works at the highest level.