There’s significangt news on both the promotion and relegation fronts this week. We have a promotion story to chew on today as Alpecin-Fenix have finally confirmed they want to be promoted to the World Tour for 2023-2025. Meanwhile on the relegation side Israel-PremierTech continue their slump, falling to 20th place.
A tricky second half of the stage and the chance for a rematch between Mathieu van der Poel and Biniam Girmay, but if they watch each other too much someone else will win the day.
A big day in the mountains, some riders are saying this is the hardest stage of the Giro. We’ll see, two things are certain: a big shake-up of the GC contenders and if you read on you’ll know more about the Blockhaus climb.
A circuit race outside Naples with two short climbs and plenty of tricky roads, they’re narrow and twisty and a contrast to yesterday’s near wilderness.
A big day in the Apennines on roads where the Giro seldom ventures. This is a day many will have marked for the breakaway while the GC contenders will hope to avoid any traps.
As friends on the Bidon podcast remarked in their Giro preview show, the Giro is on course for the longest ever streak without an Italian winner, the last time the race had a home winner was Vincenzo Nibali in 2016. He’s just announced he’s retiring and it’d be nice to be able to list several candidates rising up the ranks who could replace him but that’s not easy… still let’s have a go.
A trip up the coast and a likely sprint finish, a blogger’s rest day with a route so obvious there’s more to say about citrus fruits than the coastal course.
A sprint stage. Yes there’s a climb of over a thousand metres to scale along the way but it’s featured in recent years and the stage has ended in a sprint so it’ll take a team or two to really apply themselves to change the outcome.
The Giro is back in Italy and it’s straight into the mountains with a summit finish on Mount Etna.
