The Giro starts in Bulgaria with a seaside stage for the sprinters.
The Route: 147km and a sprint finish. After a ride along the coast, there are two laps of a 22km circuit including the intermediate sprints, one with the 6-4-2-s time bonus plus a climb to help award the mountains jersey, then it’s back on the same road they took out to reach the finish in Burgas.
The Finish: big roads around town and a gentle last bend onto the finishing straight. It does slope up to the line but gently.
The Contenders: Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) is the towering pick. He’s among the best sprinters in the world and the others in this bracket are not at the Giro. Yet he and his train have been error prone, so as good as he is there’s a risk of derailment.
Dylan Groenewegen (Unibet-Rose Rockets) finds a stage to suit, this Giro has sprint stages with climbs along the way so he’ll want to score today because others will be out of reach. Ditto his replacement at Jayco in Pascal Ackermann once a Giro points winner but today an infrequent winner.
Tobias Lund (Decathlon-CMA CGM) has been revelation this season since winning in Australia but can he keep it up? He’s proved quicker than the best at times, beating Milan and Philipsen this season and his leadout train is solid, originally built for other new recruit Olav Kooij but he’s made up for the Dutchman’s illness.
French cycling has more than one Paul as a prospect for a near future and Paul Magnier (Soudal-Quickstep) will be a three-chainring pick for hillier days but he’s got a lot of speed for flat finishes, he can just have a real advantage on hillier days. Similarly Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Intermarché) also craves a Giro stage to get his season back on track but he’s been ill.
Casper van Uden (Picnic-PostNL-Raisin) won a Giro sprint stage last year but has only one other win since.
Kaden Groves (Alpecin-PremierTech) has won two Giro stages before but he’s not a regular winner and he’s been out for a while with knee injuries so a harder pick today.
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Milan |
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Lund, Groenewegen, Magnier |
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Vernon, Van Uden |
Weather: often sunny, 19°C and a light sea breeze but 10km/h, no crosswinds to shred the peloton. Instead the risk of rain showers which could make for slippery roads.
TV: KM0 is at 2.00 and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST.
If you’re in Bulgaria it’s on БНТ 3 for the opening three days.
Otherwise host broadcaster RAI offers the richest coverage with experienced commentators as well as two roving reporters on motorbikes to add extra info.
If you want English coverage, there’s Max/Eurosport/TNT, in the US it’s on HBO Max, Flobikes for Canada, in Australia it’s free on SBS which is handy for VPN users; for Japanese coverage see J-Sports.
Postcard from Burgas
Why Bulgaria? The country is a willing payer although the politicians who championed the grande partenza have departed. Prime Minister Rosen Željazkov heralded the grande partenza announcement last December only he was swept from office two weeks later.
Italy and Bulgaria have ties, Italy is the third largest source of foreign direct investment in the country after Austria and Greece; on a smaller scale Eurostat estimates around 50-60,000 Bulgarians living in Italy for work.
Like Albania a year ago, Bulgaria is keen to appeal to Italian tourists in search of budget summer holidays; Burgas today offers sun, sea and now Euros as the national currency, plus there’s a direct Ryanair flight from Rome too. The capital city of Sofia is the main mover behind the Giro’s visit and the tourism budget is funding it.
Just as the Albanian start last year had political blessing, this year’s start has also been personally approved by Italy’s foreign minister and joint Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani. You won’t notice it today or tomorrow at the race as it’s not easy to spot on Eurosport but the Giro is increasingly becoming a political vehicle and a platform for politicians in Italy of the governing coalition. As cyclingnews.com‘s Stephan Farrand puts it “RCS Sport has cuddled up to the right-wing politicians currently in power in Italy to secure funding and sponsorship from state-owned agencies”.
This has obvious advantages with patronage required to open up roads and pay for hosting fees and more. The new maglia rosa sponsor is a tier of regional government run by the far-right. But there are risks if this further exploited for party political reasons and the Giro becomes divisive rather than unifying.
Unfortunately the overlap between politics and sport is an increasing phenomenon these days, cricket in India for instance is pretty closely tied to Modi’s government and as India dominates cricket this has far wider effects (very few India/ Pakistani games for one)
Governments come and go, and especially in Italy so there’s risks if the Giro becomes too aligned with one set of politicians. So far it’s mild but it is visible.
I hear where your coming from but compared to other sports cycling is small business.
Its obvious in cycling when there are government links but i would say at least in Australia other sports are more exposed just not as obvious on an event by event basis.
When the local netball clubs lost their courts to another development who put loads of cash to build new state of the art courts and an indoor stadium.
How is the new Australian rules team getting its new football stadium in Tasmania. Being paid for Governments for over 1 Billion aussie dollars. (and its only a 23000 people sports stadium)
There is practically no sport professional or otherwise in Australia that is not either in day to day operations or on facilities totally owned or subsidised by some level of government.
And you can bet they announce it with fanfare when making a grant of money.
Cycling is in no way special.
Dunno if it’s really “increasing” compared to Olympic boycotts in the 80s or Giro 1946… (etc.)
We could be in for a Lunderful stage.
He’s got a big leadout. You can think the team has come for GC with Gall then look at the roster and it’s more for the sprints.
Tord at 188 cm x 82 kg is big indeed! Am I wrong or was him the very same rider who originated the crasha although he himself escaped unscathed? (No specific blame, just the bunch sprints being so crazy fast and the barriers albeit legal not the very best I’ve ever seen).
It’s been windy every day in the weeks leading up to this stage but no chance today of strong enough crosswinds. The return stretch from Sozopol to Burgas is perfect for echelons.
Cycling in Bulgaria actually has a long history, although it has declined in popularity since the 80s. The Bulgarian Cycling Union was established in 1902 in Ruse on the Danube. The first cycling club in Burgas was created in 1905. Plans for the first Tour of Bulgaria were delayed due to the Balkan and WW1 wars and the turbulent years that followed. The first edition was run in 1924, the fourth?national Tour after Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and the Tour of Belgium. The second edition planned for 1925 was cancelled after the communist party members carried out a terror attack known as St Nedelya church bombing. The second and third edition were run in 1935 and 1949 respectively. Nowadays it’ s an annual event.
Track cycling was especially popular, velodromes were built in all major cities, the Burgas open air velodrome is located a few hundred meters from the finish line of today’s stage but sadly has fallen into disuse.
Thanks for the background info. Interesting,
Jonathan Milan is the clear favourite, although I fancy Casper Van Uden as an outside bet. He won a stage at the Tour of Turkey and talked about taking risks to win more. That can go wrong, of course, but if it goes right he’s very fast.
I enjoy the forays into eastern Europe, different culture and scenery is always interesting.
Seems that to a certain extent the pure sprint field is almost as polarised as the GC, but with the challenge to reach the end and multitude of potential breakaway stages it’s an interesting story to follow
That jersey is a beautiful colour!
I like the chainring for Vernon. NSN seem to have good potential for sprints, and not-quite-sprints. But how to beat Magnier, De Lie etc. Still, there’s a chance.
Really looking forward to seeing Bulgaria on the screen. The Giro’s showcasing of scenery has led directly to previous holiday bookings, and we’re looking at Albania for this year. Could the Black Sea coast be next…
Add Penhoët to the list of French Paul’s
Yes, but promising? A little less so than the others to put it gently.
I might be wrong, but the finish should be at 17.15 EEST, i.e. *16.15 CEST*
(A couple of hours from now wherever you are in the world)
Will fix this for tomorrow.
I often wondered what time zone was east of CET but never looked. EEST makes sense!
Nice that Magnier won.
Nitpick: next timezone to CET is EET
EEST is next to CEST
Interesting comment right now by Contador. He’s been checking live the metrics of the Aurum webpage (his and Ivan Basso’s bike brand) and apparently today’s break by Sevilla granted a notable jump up in visits quite greater than the one they had recorded when Maestri got 2nd on a Giro stage last year, despite that stage having had much better audience than today will nearly surely get (but that break was very big, tens of athletes in).
He says that as the as the bike brand owner he’s quite satisfied compared with contacts achieved by other means.
Haha! I have literally just been on their website looking at the black / gold Aurum. It’s a beautiful bike by modern standards. The only issue I have with it is that I definitely can’t afford one.
“By modern standards.” There aren’t many beautiful bikes these days imho. The quest for aero has led to a lot of samey-sameness.
Yeah, I tend to agree although I suppose old steel bikes were often identikit in their own way. I liked the Aurum as it didn’t have dropped seat stays which I find especially unpleasing on the eye.
Couldn’t agree more re: seat stays. Just went to Aurum website, which was running really slow. Today’s marketing at work?
Hopefully no broken bones after stage 1’s very predictable crash in the narrow finale. Stage 2 seems unlikely to be a GC day with teams thinking of getting to Italy with out any problems.
Sports director at Visma, Marc Reef, on stage 2,”There are many riders who can dream of victory. For us, the main thing remains getting through the first three days in Bulgaria as well as possible.”
Despite cycling influencers saying whatever, I wouldn’t say the finish was especially narrow. For sure, road width had little to do with the crash (available space on the opposite side), it’s just that in a bunch sprint the spearhead of the peloton always looks for the barriers. I’d add something about bikes, but this sort of sprint crash always happened, they must be avoided otherwise.
I was watching Pascal Ackermann for Jayco. Bit of a disappointment. After the bunch was reduced he didn’t even seem capable of a sprint. Just sort of sat behind the sprinters in the saddle hoping to catch a draft and move up a few places. Not going to win much with that lack of power.