If Wednesday’s uphill ride Abetone had a lively finish it was short. Today’s arrival at Campitello Matese is a genuine summit finish with 13km at 7%, enough to scatter the field into small groups. Whoever takes the maglia rosa here can hope to hold it for a week.
A marathon stage with a strength-sapping uphill finish. Of all the stages to ride after your shoulder has been dislocated and taped up this has to be a tough one. At least there’s no strade bianche portions for Alberto Contador to endure.
This should be a piece detailing the finances of the Giro d’Italia but it turns out the event and its finances are mere footnotes buried with the accounts of RCS Mediagroup, an Italian media conglomerate. As great as the Giro is, it is no money-spinner.
Money can be made though and the Giro’s heritage is being exploited for new revenue opportunities in the Middle-East and perhaps beyond where a brand new short stage race can prove more lucrative than an established grand tour.
Almost a rest day. Certainly fans and grand tour contenders alike can stand down from full alert and watch a sprint finish.
When a breakaway goes clear in a major race like the Giro it can take a long time to identify the riders involved. It’s a problem for TV viewers and teams alike. Viewers can see something is happening but without knowing who is involved and teams have to know what’s going on for tactical reasons.
The technology exists to solve this and it’s coming to the peloton. We saw it already with the IAM Cycling team trialling a geo-location system in the Tour de Romandie where rider location could be tracked in real time. Is this good?
The first uphill finish of the Giro. The climb to Abetone isn’t normally that selective but the way Tinkoff-Saxo and Astana are riding at the moment we could well see a GC showdown.
The first summit finish of the 2015 Giro d’Italia, the road up Monte Gomito to Abetone is something to look forward to but also a worry. It’s harder than the profile suggests and coming at the end of Stage 5 it could reveal who will win the race outright. Fanciful? Not really, it’s happened before.
But enough fretting about the future, it’s been a classic climb and the launchpad for Fausto Coppi’s first Giro win. But most of time the Passo dell’Abetone is a regular destination for thousands of cyclists in central Italy keen to test their form on a long climb.
Yesterday’s stage had the action concentrated mid-stage, today’s finish includes a very difficult climb near the finish.
A sprint finish? Probably but with a good chance half the field struggles to stay in contact on the hilly parts.
The race begins its anti-clockwise lap of Italy with a 177km jaunt along the coast to Genova, much of it retracing part of the Milan-Sanremo route in reverse. A sprint finish looks likely.