A race to Vicenza with a spicy finish thanks to some sharp climbs including the finish on Monte Berico.
Uncaged: a torpid stage until the final half hour when teams got to work, creating the self-fulfilling risks that meant more had to work, al before the sprint win of Olav Kooij. His Visma-LAB train went a bit early, once local Edoardo Affini had done his turn it left Wout van Aert with a long pull and he did his part but they needed another rider. It’s here that Picnic-PostNL’s Casper van Uden went long with 200m to go and Kooij was relaxed enough to slide into his slipstream and then come around in time for the win.
The Route: 180km and 1,600m of vertical gain and the profile says it all. 4km at 6.5% to the Passo Roverello early on. The San Giovanni climb later is wilder and longer but with 45km to go.
It’s once over the finish line to tackle the Monte Berico finish, then out for a loop to the south of Vicenza with the Arcugno climb, 1.7km up a 10% wall and just 10km from the finish, moves here can get rid of plenty of the field.
The Finish: an uphill finish an it’s less regular than the profile suggests, it’s more a staircase in the way the gradient changes with ramps and flat sections in between. Philippe Gilbert won here in 2015, the archetype for this kind of finish.
The Contenders: Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) has his work cut out to stay in contact on the Arcugno climb but if his team can control things like they did in Albania he’s in with a chance. Wout van Aert (Visma-LAB) is improving in form and confidence.
Isaac del Toro (UAE) is looking great in any short uphill finish at the moment and sprinting with ease for time bonuses, so a stage win is possible before we discover what he can do in the Alps.
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Pedersen, Del Toro |
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Zambanini, Hayter |
Weather: 18°C and the chance of rain.
TV: KM0 is at 13.05 and the finish is forecast for 17.15 CEST.
Postcard from Vicenza
Think Vicenza and cycling and today’s Monte Berico climb could come to mind. Many others might think of Campagnolo, the Italian component and wheel manufacturer is based here. This area is home to a lot of Italy’s cycling industry, 46% of it according to Ifis, a local bank that has a specialist cycling finance section.
Just up the road in Pozzoleone is another company which is Italy’s biggest when measured by sales: Selle Royal. It’s not having an easy time financially as many in the sector are struggling with shrinking sales and cost overhangs but it has ridden the both the recent sports boom and also the e-bike growth too.
Selle Royal started out in 1956 as a saddle maker, selle being the Italian for saddles and has grown. It launched the Fizik brand in 1996, took over British leather goods company Brooks in 2002, then US company Crankbrothers in 2006. In 2010 it bought into a Chinese seat maker but has since sold out of this. The newest acquisition is Pedaled which it bought from Japanese designer Hideto Suzuki. Selle Royal was founded Riccardo Bigolin and is still owned by the Bigolin family.
Over in Milan Selle Italia is a different company but it was taken over in the 1960s by Giuseppe Bigolin, Riccardo’s brother. It’s one of those Adidas-Puma and Hansgrohe-Grohe stories. Combined the two companies were said to be the two leading users of titanium in Italy, more than any aerospace and defence companies back in the day when saddles had metal rails. This might translate today as the biggest users of carbon fibre but that’s hard to measure.
Selle Royal’s success today is because it covers all bases, from sports to e-bikes and it’s still all made in Italy.
Fretin was probably the fastest yesterday, just with the wrong timing or position?
Maybe both, but a rider behind can look fast as they surf the slipstreams too. Fretin’s a strong rider but caught between two stools, not the fastest sprinter but if there’s a slight uphill finish then Pedersen rules the roost.
Pidcock could be good on this finish too
Would love to see Pidcock win today but he seemed to lack the edge in the finale of stage 11 (surprised he couldn’t hold off del Toro or Ciccone).
Carapaz to have another go?
Pidcock should be suited to this finish but his form’s not sparking, so getting past Del Toro looks hard.
Carapaz can try on the penultimate climb but there’s a longer flat portion to the finish which makes things harder. In a straight sprint uphill for the finish he’s got a chance, he won his first Giro stage this way and we haven’t seen him use this as much.
I can’t fully understand the way Pidcock is riding.
Beforehand I think he had said he’d forget about GC (maybe I can’t remember that well and it was the other way around?). Now I see him often spending a whole lot of energy to stay very close to the head of the race even when the stage victory is gone for good or anyway out of reach, Siena and Marsia being the two prime examples of this. Hey, he’s like 15th in GC, close to Storer and above some “minor captains” like Piganzoli, Rubio, Harper, Poole, Knox.
Why isn’t he biding his time and lettin’ go when things look (relatively) bad in order to have more energies elsewhere?
Wouldn’t be it easier for him to win from a break?, to enter which he might need to be further back in GC…
Sometimes it’s easier to play it out like I’m going to lose 8 minutes in GC then I got back 4 of them in a break or two (à la G. Martin).
And the above names look all more of a climbing type than him o a pure mountain marathon, so he’s risking to fall back in GC all the same.
Hope he gets his stage victory today so maybe he can get more relaxed and just ride as he please for the rest of the Giro. Or maybe on Sunday he’ll enter a miracle break despite being close in GC because he doesn’t feel like a menace for the rest and having kept relatively close he grabs a magical maglia rosa…! I’d have said that was going to be one of his best option to just win the stage, but we’ll see.
I think it’s partly ego. He sees himself as close to the best and therefore rides like a GC favourite. I can’t imagine he sees himself as the next Guillaume Martin! In this case, I’m happy he’s giving it a go for now to see what his GC potential is – he’s near enough to the mix in advance of the third week, where he could feasibly rise to a top 5 or alternatively lose 20 min in a day and then go for stages. The experience would hopefully shape his future ambitions – based on the departure from Ineos, I imagine he’s (unjustifiably?) felt like he shouldn’t be a supporting rider at a GC, so this Giro against the likes of Ayuso, Tiberi, the Yates, Roglic etc will hopefully be a reality check. He’s sounded slightly less bullish in interviews in recent days.
I think Ineos is pretty happy to be out from under that contract.
They’re probably still paying at least three-fifths of it until the end of 2027…
I’m surprised to see IR persisting with Hayter. Several years ago, yes, but since then he’s been, excluding TTs, invisible. A surprise would be appreciated today.
He’d be a 3-chainring pick before but he seems to be picking up again and today’s approach isn’t so technical for him to get squeezed out.
Hayter really delivered for you today DJW! I guess being dead last on a stage suited to your characteristics isn’t exactly invisible though. I had some hopes for him after his impressive TT indicated the legs were still decent.
Looking back at the results from 2015 and it was punchy riders who generally got the better of GC riders. Gilbert won, Ulissi was 3rd, Geschke was 4th and Battaglin 5th.
What price on Ulissi rolling back the years today?! You would think it should suit Del Toro, Ciccone, Carapaz and Pidcock. Maybe Quinten Hermans is a handy outsider?
not even a ring for van Aert?
He’s got a good chance but if he’s there then surely Pedersen is a bike length ahead? Or possibly Vacek for today too.
You were right, but it was close!!!
Half a bike length from the overhead!
Roglic for half a chainring to upset the apple cart?
Certainly he’s short of his best form but if we’re talking Carapaz and Pidcock he’s not that far away?
Doesn’t feel steep enough, or the stage hard enough before. But if he can then all the better for GC, ten seconds helps and the story of him climbing back even more.
I got the impression from an interview with one of them that the whole of team Bora are licking their wounds at the moment … waiting for the hard climbing days.
That day in 2015 is interesting also because Contador was going at everything, and much later on (after the epic Mortirolo stage which had him look unassailable even with that untimely puncture) he’d attack in another Gilbert-won stage with a long range move, during a middle mountain day over the shores of Lago Maggiore, despite having already some 4 and 5 mins over his closest rivals in GC – so he’d turn that into 5 and 6 with just a couple of mountain stages to go.
Well, as many will remember, he’d finish *less than two minutes* over Fabio Aru.
Now have a look at what stage 20 looked like in 2015 and this year…
Was Contador spending to much with that aggressive riding? (After Astana had already forced super-aggressive racing since the very first week)
Or was he right in “battere il ferro finché è caldo” and “mettere fieno in cascina”, i.e., pushing hard as long as he had the form hoping to crack the rivals sooner, and later just to resist hard when his own turn for cracking would come?
Does the above apply anyway to, say, what Del Toro should do or Bernal might be doing?
History only teaches that it’s got nothing to teach, they say. But it’s still fun to remember that great edition and foster some hope we’ll eventually see something great this year, too.
Contador wasn’t quite the same rider after his enforced absence but he kept the same attitude. He was attacking by nature but his performance no longer matched his ambitions.
Del Toro, on the other hand, is on the way up.
Far from true, I’m afraid. The quantity and quality of performances in that Giro was absolute top (remember that Aru that same year would go on to win the Vuelta over a Dumoulin, and Landa on a good year is also a very top rider, especially on a mountain goat route). Battling with Gilbert on such a finish… and that Mortirolo.
However, if one had any doubt, watching the 2014 Vuelta should be more than enough (or that year’s Tirreno).
2012 Vuelta (which he won) and 2013 were indeed under par because of the stop.
He went from boss of the TdF to 4th, DNF, 5th, DNF, 9th.
He only totally bossed the TDF in 2009 (and he never raced in a team which enjoyed clear political support, barring perhaps 2007).
That said, when one watches TDF only, it implies simply failing to understand the sport. The stats you report include two (2) Giro-TDF attempts… beyond the capacity of anyone between Pantani and Pogi. In both cases he won the Giro, in both cases an extreme one, in 2011 because of the course and in 2015 also due to Astana’s attitude. Then there’s that 9th place… in his retirement year, ROTFL.
Dunno what to make with the DNFs… Froome also DNF in 2014, they had a face off at the Vuelta in equal conditions and Contador won.
It’s more like he went declining at the end of the typical decade on the highest level of top competition, he noticed that in 2016 (losing out a whole lot of short stage races, too) and indeed decided to retire after his last season not to go further down. Much more consistent than your explanation…
I had thought that he had the 2011 Giro taken away from him much like the 2010 TdF.
Uhmm… yes… and so?
It’s not like the double GT effort went away from his legs starting the 2011 TDF… only because the UCI (absurdely enough, but with team and rider agreeing) stripped the previous result!
Add to the above that, as seen at that same TDF, Contador, unlike Froome or Dumoulin, opted for risky moves trying to go for the win even if it implied losing a podium he’d achieve with more conservative riding.
Contador won the TdF in 2007 (aged 25 or thereabouts), wasn’t invited in 2008, won in 2009 and had the best time in 2010 but later had the win taken from him … and he was barred from competing in 2011.
These were his prime years and I stand by my original statement that he was past his best when he returned in 2012.
You’re well wrong, may I advise more watching races and less PCS (which I love of course).
To start with, Contador’s 2007, exceptional as it was as a proof of pure talent due to the young age of the athlete, was won essentially because Rasmussen was taken away from the race for “opportunity reasons” when he had *over 3 minutes* on Contador (5′, 6′, 9′ on the rest of the top five, a little Pogi style) and only 3 flat stages including Paris plus one ITT were left.
Before you imagine ITT miracles, and as bad as the Chicken was in ITTs, Contador wasn’t still what we’d later meet in that discipline, he lost some 2 mins to Leipheimer and Evans and performed along the lines of Pereiro and José Iván Gutiérrez (not the Buffalo).
He eventually won that TDF by a narrow margin of half a minute or less on Leipheimer and Evans, which makes it pretty clear that hadn’t Rasmussen been there to force those uphill rushes, Contador would have much probably lost the race. But that’s not my point, either, it’s rather that it’s just laughable to label that TDF as “bossing” or even comparable to the level of performance seen by Contador in 2011, 2014, 2015. On top of that we should also consider that 2007 TDF had one of the lowest level ever, with 50% of the final GC top ten hitting the big jackpot of their personal best result ever at the TDF or even in any GT, namely Leipheimer, Zubeldia, Kirchen, Popovych, Astarloza. … Bossing? Seriously?
In 2011 he wasn’t barred from competing at all, his crazy attacks far from the line prompted one of the most entertaining stages in TDF history. How can you have forgotten that?!
Finally, the issue with 2010 isn’t that he was stripped of the title but that he struggled big time to prevail on Andy Schleck, finally some 39″ I think, precisely what Contador got with the Chaingate. Now, I don’t blame him for attacking and he’s a worthy winner because mechanicals are a part of the sport, but, again… bossing?!? Beating A. Schleck by a mere 30″ in an over 50 km ITT? Andy was a gifted rider, but had not the “head-set” for cycling and his career results speak for him. Menchov put nearly 2 minutes *on* Contador in that ITT and was as close as 2 mins in the final GC. Since Contador’s eclosion, it was the closest margin by far between the two in any GT after or before 2011.
Really, it’s like not having watched those races at all.
“untimely puncture” … 🤣🤣
Ah ah ah, good remark 😉
What about Paul Magnier for today? He was 2nd at Omloop this year, and has been top 10 three times this Giro already. Is it too much uphill for him?
He’s good at uphill efforts but has put on weight to be better in sprints so harder today, plus he’s just not in top form either. He was going backwards on the small climb on the opening stage, the risk is the same today on the penultimate climb. Happy to be served these words back later, at some point he’ll start winning and his team have a lot of faith in him, he has impressive numbers, is a good bike handler and more.
Ayuso admitted he’s still hurting so a dig from one of the GC hopefuls could be interesting.
Roglic still riding as though Ayuso is the main threat. But Del Toro continues to snatch seconds here & there. If Roglic & the DS staff don’t pay attention, they could be in deep hole in 3rd week. Expecting del Toro to fade in week-3 seems a big risk. Not to mention key mountain stages being neutralized or shortened due to bad weather.
Ayuso is getting everything right… but it’s equally possible to say he’s using up energy and will pay while others are biding their time.
do you mean Ayuso or Del Toro? Del Toro seems to be the one sprinting for bonus seconds, both at Red Bull intermediate sprints and at finish line. Ayuso still seems content to stay in the “GC pack”, as does Roglic.
Doh, Del Toro is what I meant. It’s interesting that Roglič is not going for these time bonuses when once upon a time it’s how he won stage races, instead it seems he’s hoping to save energy so he can bet big in the Alps.
It’s looking more and more like we really won’t know anything until deep within the third week. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stages 19 and 20 turn the entire race upside down. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Del Toro pulls a Pogi and never gets dropped. Really looking forward to Tuesday and beyond.
Sheesh, your favorites finish Top Three, IR. You’ve been calling the favorites very well this Giro!