It’s Ascension Day and not just the ecumenical celebration, here’s a short stage packed with climbing, descending and next to no valley roads. A fearsome stage? Possibly but for all the 4,000m of climbing packed into such a short space these climbs are all on well-engineered roads, a test of power rather than wild ambush country. It’s on TV from start to finish.
D-Day as in Dumoulin’s day in the high mountains and a huge stage awaits with three hard climbs spread over a gruelling 222km, or six and half hours.
The weather looks set fair for the Alps with cool but sunny conditions expected for tomorrow’s siege of the Stelvio and for the rest of the week too. Tom Dumoulin looks in command and even signalled he was the Giro’s padrone at one point during yesterday’s stage when Nairo Quintana had crashed by telling the main group to slow. As the Giro enjoys its third rest day there’s the sense that everything so far been antipasti to the dishes about to be served up in the Alps.
A taste of autumn with a course borrows, or rather copies the Tour of Lombardy including the lively finish through Bergamo’s citadel.
The sacred and the profane, the Giro brings a bike race to one of the largest religious shrines in the Alps, Oropa and a climb that has been part of the race’s theatre in recent years even if it’s never been decisive.
A flat procession to Tortona, the town where Fausto Coppi died from malaria aged 40. Maybe not the most cheerful commemoration but there’s music along the way too.
Today’s stage of the Giro doesn’t look like a thriller but ride the route and there are plenty of tales along the way, especially at the finish in Reggio Emilia where the city’s sports arena, the Mapei stadium, is a reminder of Italian cycling’s last glory days.
A hilly day in the Apennines with hardly a metre of flat road but it’s not mountainous like we’ll see in the Alps. Many riders will have ticked today for the breakaway.
