Giro Stage 3 Preview

A sprint finish? Probably but with a good chance half the field struggles to stay in contact on the hilly parts.

Stage 2 Wrap: the results show a sprint finish but there was more with a late crash provoked by a cretin trying to ride into the bunch. This stopped some riders and saw them lose over a minute, notably Domenico Pozzovivo who was fuming at the finish. The circuit didn’t look particularly wild but the opening stages of a grand tour means there’s so much at stake and the risks are high and there were more crashes. Etixx-Quickstep lost Pieter Serry, not a household name but one of the few climbers to support Rigo Uran. Tinkoff-Saxo and Astana driving the bunch around Genova despite not bringing a sprinter: better to be at the front rather than caught behind.

Elia Viviani Giro Genova

In the sprint Elia Viviani put in a trademark late surge to win. He’s a track rider and has often been able to display huge torque in the final moments of a sprint to speed past in the final metres. Don’t underestimate the value of an Italian win either, watching RAI news on Saturday the sports bulletin opened with news of a German driver qualifying fastest for the Spanish Formula 1 GP before a brief look mention of the Giro. An Italian win helps boost the Giro.

The Route: you might see the y-axis and all that climbing but the x-axis and the distance matters because 136km is shorter than many U23 races. The early Colle Caprile is 5% and the climb of Barbagelata (“frozen beard”) is harder at 5.5km and over 7% average and with an early section that’s 4km between 8 and 10%. That’s hard enough to ditch the sprinters but there’s the run to get back which is technical at first before becoming easier to chase.

The Finish: flat and fast, the race runs along the coast is almost a straight line for the final 10km although street furniture, junctions and roundabouts get in the way.

The Contenders: is the climbing enough to eject the sprinters? Yes but not all of them. Those who struggle with gravity can easily lose 90-120 seconds to Barbagelata alone but they’ll be tired by the climbing before. With this we can imagine a reduced field coming into the finish. The route sticks to wide roads most of the time so it’s hard to imagine this as ambush country for the big GC names. Orica-Greenedge will try to control the race and if other sprinters and their team mates have made the selection we can expect them to chase any remaining fugitives.

Race leader Michael Matthews is the obvious choice, after all he has to get to the front to save his jersey never mind the stage and his team will back him. Gianni Meersman (Etixx-Quickstep) and Juan-José Lobato (Movistar) as two others who can cope with the climbs but we’ve not got much to go on form-wise while Trek Factory Racing’s Fabio Felline thrived on this kind of terrain in the Tour of the Basque Country. Sacha Modolo sits between the finisseurs and the sprinters, he won the other day in Turkey when many sprinters were dropped.

Among the pure sprinters don’t ignore André Greipel who always climbs better than many think and will be out to amend yesterday’s “error” of starting his sprint too soon. Also Elia Viviani says he’s sprinting well but Sky have been making him work on his climbing too.

Otherwise we could hope some teams drive the pace as hard as possible to eject as many sprinters as possible and in the chaotic finish a rider jumps clear, think Simon Gerrans, Philippe Gilbert or Enrico Battaglin.

Michael Matthews
Sacha Modolo, Gianni Meersman, J-J Lobato
Felline, Greipel, Gilbert, Battaglin, Gerrans, Bole

Weather: a calm day with sunshine and 23°C.

TV: the feed starts around 3.10pm CET. Tune for the action with the Barbagelata climb starting around 4.00pm and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm Euro time.

Cyclingfans and steephill.tv both have links to pirate feeds with the latter also listing where you can view the race properly too.

Giro d'Italia

The Giro is: the racer’s race. Sure everyone wants to win the Tour de France and a stage in July but the pressure, stress and intensity can make it all feel like work. The Giro is a more confidential and imtimate event played out in front of smaller but often more knowledgeable crowds and attended by specialist rather than generalist media. The Giro has varied terrain to offer something for everyone and once the racing is done the hotels are often appreciated. Cuisine is less of an issue with many teams now employing a chef but not all do and the local cuisine is appreciated by many to the point where restraint is required. Many who ride the Giro for the first time vow to return.

37 thoughts on “Giro Stage 3 Preview”

  1. Chad Haga’s journal over on Velonews mentioned a spectator riding on the road on a beach cruiser was the cause of the massive pile up in Genoa. That is just absolutely crazy!

    Great spring form Viviani, he followed all the right wheels jumping from around and improvising on that long finishing straight. I am watching live on Rai every morning and to say that he provided some quality material for the various reporters is an understatement, good call on mentioning this above.

    Should be a cracker of a stage tomorrow being so short. Either the attacks will fly or it will end up being a petard mouillé, i don’t see how there can be any in between.

  2. +1 re Viviani.
    It was a scrappy finish. Sure Greipel went early, up a slight gradient, but he had to do so (he seems not quite finish-line sharp yet) and the rest followed. Only Viviani waited. Nice punchy win. Almost a poach – some might say UnBrailsfordian.

  5. One of my favorite things about the Giro is I don’t need to resort to pirate feeds (I’m in the US). RAI has great coverage they make available to all for free and it gives me a chance to brush up on my Italian.
    As for the sprinters, Mezgec looks like he’ll be solid for this style of “puncheur sprinting” too.

  6. Interesting to see Tinkoff and Astana putting men on the front for safety reasons. It’s going to be a long three weeks for some of their riders if they have to do that on every flat stage and in the mountains.

    Couldn’t help but watch it and think the first few days of the Tour are going to be crazy on the narrow Belgian roads. Every team with a GC interest will be trying to keep their man safe and thus driving up the pace.

    I’m sure we didn’t see this so much a few years ago but the number of crashes now seems much higher.

    Today – take your pick from Gerrans or Matthews.

    • If Garmindale and AG2R are planning on being up there in the GC then they better tell their leaders to start riding like Cadel Evans, never more than 20 guys from the front.

    • It’s all those slammed stems head down ar*e in the air positions, they cannot safely see where their going. I guess backbones have come a long way since the 60/70’s.

    • The Giro used to be infamous for ‘piano’ stages where everyone would saunter along safely all day and only wind up the pace with 10km to go, but this doesn’t really seem to happen any more.

      The big thing though is everyone seems to believe the received wisdom that you have to keep your GC guys at the front during flat stages to keep them out of trouble. Firstly this means people mixing it with sprint trains at the end of the race who sometimes don’t have the bike handling skills for this part of the race. But mainly it means *everyone* is trying to get to the front all the time, and obviously not everyone can fit at the front, so there’s lots of jostling and aggressive riding.

      Also there are more sprint trains than there used to be which naturally means more crowded finales.

      • Except in this race there isn’t much in the way of sprint trains, something that was discussed yesterday on the post-race TV show. Seems teams that might normally show up with a team devoted to a sprinter have either devoted it to a GC hope or filled their roster with stage-hunters. While I enjoy watching the overhead shots of trains getting their men in position, yesterday they were pretty much absent and the commentators on RAI seemed to think that’s the way it would be for 2015’s Corsa Rosa. Today’s stage could sort of be considered for the sprinters until you realize there’s 2000 meters of climbing packed into the first 90 kms. I think the crashing is caused by the usual elements – early days with a full peloton (I think there are too many riders in the modern peloton) combined with the usual DS barking at the riders to be in the front to avoid the crashes. Once things thin out I suspect the big crashes will be fewer as well.

  7. The stage profile above being only 2D, it missses out on the “lateral profile”, so to speak. According to the Giro route book the stage is a “never-ending series of curves” as well. So I’m taking a long shot and betting on the breakaway staying away, victory going to a rider who can follow on the climbs, attack over the last one, descend well and stay away for the last 10 K flat. Stefan Küng, anyone?

  8. Saxo to stick Rogers in the break, Contador to jump up to him on the final climb, and then the two of them barrel down the descent with the race broken up and all over the road as the other GC hopes chase back desperately … I hope…

  9. In “The Giro is:” paragraph, do you mean ‘intimate’ not ‘imitate’?

    Thanks for the preview. With the short distance today and Orica’s focus on pink, I can’t see the breakaway reaching the finish today, but it’ll be very close.

  10. Thanks for the great writeup! I enjoy the giro mostly through your writing, just as I enjoyed pro cycling through newspaper reports when I grew up.

    Typo: “The Giro is a more confidential and imitate” -> “intimate”

  11. Never mind hoping teams get on the front and drive it hard to drop the sprinters, I would expect them to. After all why else are teams like BMC or FDJ without a GC man or sprinter even there if they aren’t going to try on a stage like this? I’d expect Gilbert, Matthews and most of Bardiani to be very racy today. Is Sonny Colbrelli in the Bardiani team? Might be worth a poke on a day like today, if he’s there?!

  13. I keep reading about Griepel being a good climber but can’t really find any evidence of it – from memory he was dropped before Cav at Milan San Remo wasn’t he?

  14. Watching Viviani via the helicopter shot was amazing. Great to see how he held his nerve even when Hofland (?) dive-bombed him in the last sweeping left hander.
    Anyone know what he was pointing at as he crossed the line?

    • La Gazzetta have a good spread of screengrabs to show Viviani’s moves through the bunch in the finishing straight. A great win but it did look like one of those sprints where you could replay it 10 times and the scenario might change each time.

  15. “…with the latter also listing where you can view the race properly too.”

    Cyclingfans.com always lists the proper (legal) broadcasting sources (both over-the-air and streaming) in its race listings. Perhaps you meant “the former also listing”?

  16. Lot of riders lose time by a crazy tourist. I think all riders must get. time of the winner. Now a man like Pozzovivo lost 1 minute, where can he win that back? A normal crash is part of the sport but not this one.

    • I thought the same thing, not sure if there’s anything in the rules to do anything about it though. Plus there’s crashes with spectators all the time. If everyone gets the same time yesterday, then why not give Paris Roubaix from a year or two ago to Stybar? Opens up too many other possibilities if everyone gets given the same time yesterday.

      • Unfortunately a late train between 2 bunch’s can have the same effect with time lost but when their that close to line I think there could be some le way

  17. If a spectator did cause this crash, he should be found and face criminal charges if any of the riders’ injuries (Serry?) occurred in this crash.
    The spectators’ inexplicable desire to be on TV gets worse every year and something like this is always on the cards.
    Not sure what the authorities can do during the race – you can’t police everyone – but punishments for those who cause injuries might stop some of the morons.

    • They should have some fan “justice” meted out. Same with the bozos who insist on running in the road on the climbs, even worse when they’re costumed up in some ridiculous outfit. While watching TV I’m always hoping someone on the roadside will trip or yank these morons off the course. These clowns are far from race fans..instead they’re ego-maniacs whose desire to be shown on TV overwhelms any common sense.

  18. Bernie Eisel’s twitter feed shows facebook footage from a fan clearly showing someone come off the pavement and join the bunch just as it is winding up, and the mass pile up a second later.

  19. It is beyond inexcusable. How could you count yourself as a fan of pro cycling and imperil the very riders you look up to?
    I am so sick of the clowns feeling the need to insert themselves. Watch, imbibe, cheer your bloody head off, but do not interfere with the race nor make it about you.

    I have a long-running joke amongst my friends that the solution is a lead moto equipped with samurai swords on each side.

  20. Do you guys recognize that the production of this years giro broadcast is different? I notice that especially in midst of the stage the images change very fast

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