Giro d’Italia Stage 12 Preview

A day for the sprinters but the climbing mid-stage is worth more than a glance.

Ciuf Ciuf: a massive fight to get in the break, part of it tracked by the lurking Giro train that gets to follow the race at times, presumably adding rail closures to the nearby road closures. Those on board got first class seats to watch the racing. Close to 40 riders were away but the real selection only happened on the main climb of the day and Luke Plapp, Nairo Quintana, Pello Bilbao plus colleagues Wout Poels and Lorenzo Fortunato were away.

Behind an attack from Egan Bernal split the peloton and prompted a selection, including his colleague Thymen Arensman briefly going backwards and aware of the limited damage he eased off. Once the big riders calmed down it looked like the breakaway was clear for the day and thoughts turned to who would win: Bilbao from the sprint perhaps? Did Plapp have to go solo again, and if so how and where?

Only this was their problem, each rider was thinking about how to win rather than the need for cohesion to stay away. Their lead started to dip and after a few rampaging pulls from Mads Pedersen there was only a minute in it as Lidl-Trek had decided to go for the stage. Suddenly the breakaway was swept up and now EF lead the group and this launched Richard Carapaz’s attack. The move was telegraphed but nobody could or would respond, something Giulio Ciccone later confirmed.

Behind there was no Mexican stand-off as Isaac del Toro was the firs to chase, but alone and that wasn’t going to work. UAE put Majka to work but the Pole just limited the damage as up ahead the “Locomotive of Carchi” was full stead ahead for the win. At one point he had over thirty seconds but in the end he only took twenty, time bonus included and Del Toro sprinted for second, picking up the next time bonus. Behind Adam Yates lost a few seconds but Max Poole, already four minutes down on GC, lost over a minute.

It all made for a lively stage and still more uncertainty overall ahead of three calmer days before Sunday’s rendez-vous on Monte Grappa and the Asiago plateau.

The Route: 172km and 1,700m of vertical gain, today should be for the sprinters but the first half of the stage is hard going in the hills.

The first climb to Baiso is a tough one, 6km at over 5% and crucially with the best part of 3km at over 9%. The last climb to Borsea is hard too at 3.5km at 7% with a series of hairpins but that’s it for the day, almost 100km to set-up the sprint.

The Finish: a finishing circuit that’s a figure-of-eight shape on the banks of the river Po. It’s flat and and the route crosses the line once before so riders get to see the left hand bend with 400m to go, all on big roads on the edge of town.

The Contenders: pick your sprinter. Casper Van Uden (Picnic-PostNL) can put his time trial helmet back on but he’s lost his lead-out man Bram Welten. Olav Kooij (Visma-LAB) can try again and Wout van Aert is looking sharper so this can help, a lead-out is not essential but it can improve chances, especially as teams have relatively light trains at this Giro. Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is the easiest pick, he and his team made it look easy in Napoli.

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) won’t like the flat dragster finish but the early part of the course could see Lidl-Trek try to sap rival sprinters.

	Groves
	Kooij
	Van Uden, Magnier, Fretin

Weather: sunshine and clouds and the chance of a shower, 24°C.

TV: KM0 is at 13.25pm and the finish is forecast for 17.15 CEST.

Postcard from Viadana
Today’s finish is in a small town but there’s a cycling connection. It was here that Abici was founded in 2006. The company was created by three designers with the idea of recreating bikes like they used to be, solid steel bikes for riding about town but with top quality parts. The idea was to have stylish bikes with high functioning parts, all with a retro look.

Stylish it was, they did not have a shop but a bottega instead. When Fendi wanted a bike they called Abici, yours for $5,900 a lot today, even more back in 2009 when it appeared in Vogue magazine. When champagne house Veuve Clicquot wanted a fleet of orange bikes Abici did the work.

It felt like you were more likely to see an Abici in the pages of Monocle than up the road in Mantova. And as you might guess from the use of the past tense here the company has stopped trading. It’s an expensive proposition to sell a town bike at a premium price, although the starting price was a few hundred Euros.

In a different corner of the market Italian brands like Colnago, Pinarello and Campagnolo have become luxury brands and carefully positioned as such, but offer performance too. But this is becoming a challenge for Campagnolo. It’s back in the World Tour with Cofidis and also in the Giro with the VF Bardiani team too but this is neither luxury positioning nor, so far, performance… but Milan Fretin can change all that for day.