Recent content by Devil's Elbow

Hardly the best stage featuring Fedaia, but surely the 2008 MTF on a stage with six categorised climbs including the hard side of Giau qualifies?

Alicia Franck out until January with mononucleosis. Feels like a pretty bad season in terms of major health issues so far.

They will have their obligatory stage into the Po Valley (albeit this time with Vegni's beloved Ca' di Poggio close to the finish) in between.

This was also my first thought. The 2006 generation is so good that its leading lights are already ineligible and the 2007 generation is the weakest set of junior graduates in ages. Consequently there is less than half a team's worth of eligible riders I actually want.

I think this is less typical of cycling and more typical of Italy, tbh.

A lot of bad news on the injury front this weekend that hasn't been discussed yet: - Iserbyt is experiencing the same symptoms as he had before his iliac artery surgery again. He was supposed to return in eight days from now in Niel, instead there are rumours about him not racing at all this...

Losing a tiebreaker for second in a three-year game where scores run past 20000 points... I cannot wrap my head around that one. At least it wasn't for first place, I guess. It hurts even more because Baudin had 16 points removed for his tramadol offense way back in the first year.

I have every single one of the big scorers this month bar the super-rare Seixas and De Schuyteneer and I still lost ground to both teams ahead of me, yikes. On the plus side, the chances of me extending my trackrecord of 100% top-5 finishes to a third edition seem solid.

Will be the second year in a row with zero pro races in Latin America, arguably the area where the sport has the largest number of fans that isn't Europe. Really not a good sign in terms of internationalisation, or even for the sport in general.

It was pretty obvious that something clinic-related was up when it became clear nobody wanted to comment on his absence. Also, biopassport irregularities starting in early 2022 only leading to a provisional suspension at the end of 2025 is bizarre.

Aside from the first hairpin, it's way wider than something like Pramartino. Also no major drops for anyone to crash into.

Looks like good news with regards to Jayco:

You can, by descending through Le Cruet.

Piancavallo is connected to absolutely nothing except to some extent La Crosetta (~12k of flat), which is in Veneto and therefore off limits for an all-Friulian final mountain stage. So the penultimate climb will be >50k from the finish, which means you almost completely eliminate the potential...

There are three places in Friuli where you really shouldn't have the finish of your final mountain stage, and they are Zoncolan, Lussari and Piancavallo. This will be the third time in the history of the Giro that the final mountain stage is in Friuli, so if they manage to complete the set it...