Giulio Ciccone Questions European Championships Photo Finish Against Remco Evenepoel

Giulio Ciccone wants to see the image that decided the European road title for himself, because he still has doubts about Sunday’s razor-thin defeat.

The Italian said he still cannot come to terms with the photo finish verdict and footage of his dramatic loss against Remco Evenepoel.

“The title was awarded by a margin of 0.0028 seconds, or 2.8 thousandths of a second,” Ciccone wrote on Instagram.

“I’ve watched the available footage hundreds of times and, in the shots where the finish line is visible, I keep seeing something that I cannot reconcile with that verdict.”

Evenepoel snagged gold Sunday with a spectacular bike throw in Slovenia to edge out the Italian in a two-up sprint so tight that it took a photo finish to call the winner.

On Monday, Ciccone praised the Belgian’s performance and defended his racing tactics, but said he wanted to see the evidence for himself.

“Remco was the strongest rider yesterday,” he wrote. “I’m asking for something very simple: to see the photo finish at the actual finish line.”

Ciccone said commissaires and federation technical staff explained Monday morning how the photo finish works and the criteria used to interpret it.

But that’s not enough for the 31-year-old Lidl-Trek star to accept the outcome.

“So I’m not asking for another explanation,” he wrote. “I’m asking to see the photo finish that corresponds exactly to the actual finish line.”

A brutally close photo finish

Ciccone’s questions followed a brutally close finish to Sunday’s wild and wide-open European Championship.

Ciccone and Evenepoel dueled to the end, with the Italian looking to have the winning edge after out-positioning the Belgian on the final corner. Evenepoel opened up a desperate burst in the closing meters and timed his bike throw perfectly at the line.

After a long and tense wait, the race jury eventually awarded the victory to Evenepoel.

That still stings for Ciccone.

In a lengthy public post on Monday, the Italian said he wants to see the photo of both wheels crossing the line.

“Because if a European title is decided by 2.8 thousandths of a second, I believe it is legitimate to ask for that crossing to be shown with the same precision used to determine the result,” he wrote.

“If that image confirms the verdict, there will be nothing more to add,” he wrote. “But until I’m shown that correspondence, a question remains for me that has yet to be answered.”

‘13,000 times per second’

On Monday evening, the Union Européenne de Cyclisme — which runs and organizes the European championships — issued the following statement:

“The Union Européenne de Cyclisme (UEC) informs that the photo-finish system used at the 2026 UEC Road European Championships (EtherLynx Vision PRO X) records the finish line thousands of times per second (13,000 in the specific case of the European Championship races), making it possible to determine the finishing order with extreme precision, even when the differences are minimal,” a media note read.

“It is important to clarify that a photo finish is not a traditional photograph. The final image is composed of the chronological sequence of recordings made at the finish line; for this reason, the horizontal axis represents time, not distance. This can create apparent distortions of wheels, bicycles and riders, without any impact on the accuracy of the result.

“In cycling, the determining reference is the most advanced part (tangent) of the front wheel at the moment it reaches the finish line. At the European Championships, two independent photo-finish systems were used, providing two separate images to verify the result.”