2012 Giro d'Italia; Stage 15: Busto Arsizio - Lecco/Pian dei Resinelli (169km)

[Christomir]

I can understand a young up and coming rider making that their goal or a rider that makes the top 20 and a stage win as their goal but for that to be any other rider's only goal it does lack ambition.

It's a question of perspective. We've never had a Bulgarian rider even start a GT, let alone finish in the Top 20. Danail Andonov is due to ride the Vuelta this year and if he were to somehow achieve such a placing in the GC, it would be considered a huge success. Different riders, different teams and different nationalities have different goals in GTs.

 

[Caruut]

I suppose if one wants to ride for GC later in GTs later in your career, the experience of having to ride for placings might be good.

 

[Havetts]

TJ Slagter said he suffered from a hungerknock, seems Eros wasnt the only one to suffer hard on this stage.

https://twitter.com/#!/rabowielrennen/status/204603524959584257

 

[karlboss]

It doesn't even need to be a mountain stage though. Replace one of the needless breakaway stages or flat sprint stages with a decent length ITT (I know the recent vogue is for shorter ones, so I'll say 40, but 50 would be better) in the middle of week 2, and you turn the medium mountain stages at the end of week 1 into much more important factors for the climbers, and if they don't make good in them, they need to turn the penultimate weekend's stages into more selective ones because they can't trust waiting until Giau with another 35km of ITT at the end. The state of the race turns the existing stages into better ones, just like how Saxo's weakness and a couple of small bumps, coupled with the L'Aquila gift meaning time was needed, turned stage 12 of the 2010 Giro into a really exciting one as several contenders escaped and gained time on a flat stage, and Evans decided it was Daniele Righi's fault and started beating him up.

2009 was also a good edition, due to the awesome TT early. This narrowed the contenders to 2, but gave other riders in the top a little latitude to go for stage wins and take back time, it wouldn't have been hard to imagine a small slip up and Sastre or Pellizotti actaully making up the minutes they needed to.
Other subject: I'd prefer seeing young riders ride as domestiques for established riders instead of riding for 20th position, to learn the GT GC ropes.