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2016 Giro d'Italia : STAGE 3: Nijmegen – Arnhem 190 km

You can tell everyone is real excited about stage 3. :p

Usually I let the pro's open new race threads (especially for the big races), but I'll get things started since Eshnar has already written beautifully for every stage.


STAGE 3: Nijmegen – Arnhem 190 km

Stage start: 12.40 CET, 8 May

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Technical Overview:
Same starting and finishing cities of the previous day, only inverted. The profile of the route is very similar: flat, flat, more flat, a wall (!!!), and two laps of city circuit. The climb, Posbank (2.2 km at 2.9%, GPM4), features a nice final 500m at 7.2%, with 12% max. The top is at 53 km to go, which makes the climb totally useless, besides the KOM battle. The city circuit is 14 km long, and is actually quite tricky, with some dangerous bends here and there. However, the sprint itself should be safe, as the last worrisome bend is at almost 3 km to go.

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The Climbs:

Posbank GPM4
The official numbers include the false flat at the beginning, but the only serious section is the final 500m.
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What to expect:
Bunch sprint.

arnhem.jpg
 
Its very obvious stages 2 and 3 are a Giro di Gelderland. There's nothing special parcours wise in the area, there's nothing special to see. They're not here for exciting racing, they're here to showcase the Giro. And they're definitely succeeding at that.

Parcours wise there's really not much you can do here, apart from using the hills around Nijmegen better.
 
May 4, 2016
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Today it might be a bit windier, but it will be a tailwind in the second part of the stage, so we can expect a bunchsprint like yesterday
Probably another one for Kittel
Behind him I expect a better place for Nizzolo, and I think Démare will be again in the Top 4 if his teammates make the same job than in stage 2
 
Re:

Red Rick said:
Its very obvious stages 2 and 3 are a Giro di Gelderland. There's nothing special parcours wise in the area, there's nothing special to see. They're not here for exciting racing, they're here to showcase the Giro. And they're definitely succeeding at that.

Parcours wise there's really not much you can do here, apart from using the hills around Nijmegen better.
Then just don't start a grand tour in this area. I understand that you are very happy about it but objectively its just stupid to start in an area where you can actually only make completely boring sprint stages. I know its all about money but as a cycling fan I just find this start lame.

Back to the stage today, a different winner than Kittel would surprise me more than Roglic winning the gc in front of Firsanov.
 
Re: Re:

Gigs_98 said:
Red Rick said:
Its very obvious stages 2 and 3 are a Giro di Gelderland. There's nothing special parcours wise in the area, there's nothing special to see. They're not here for exciting racing, they're here to showcase the Giro. And they're definitely succeeding at that.

Parcours wise there's really not much you can do here, apart from using the hills around Nijmegen better.
Then just don't start a grand tour in this area. I understand that you are very happy about it but objectively its just stupid to start in an area where you can actually only make completely boring sprint stages. I know its all about money but as a cycling fan I just find this start lame.

Back to the stage today, a different winner than Kittel would surprise me more than Roglic winning the gc in front of Firsanov.

Totally depends on what the goal is. If the only goal is to create exciting racing from day 1, then sure. However, the turnout is huge. Its clearly visible that the Dutch are happy to host the Giro. That's not a bad image in my book. You basically sacrifice one stage, because there's always a sprint stage in the first three days.
 
Sep 16, 2009
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The only decent thing about the stage will be if Fraile goes in the break or which of his team-mates picks up the 3 points on offer. Watch the battle up the climb, and then watch the last 3km. Nothing else will be exciting
 
Re: Re:

LaFlorecita said:
Alexandre B. said:
It's basically stage 1 with the same towns.

What a weekend.
What? Only the start and finish are the same, just reversed. We just don't have much else besides flat roads here.
Only the start and finish are the same, + the fact that there's one little hill on offer, that it's 190 km long, that it will end in a bunch sprint, and that it's in the same region. Other than that, it's completely different.
 
Sep 16, 2009
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Couldn't they have taken one stage along the coast in the hope of cross winds? Groningen to Amsterdam along the coast would have been alright if it was doable.
 
Sep 16, 2009
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Re: Re:

LaFlorecita said:
Sasquatch said:
Couldn't they have taken one stage along the coast in the hope of cross winds?
The province of Gelderland paid a lot of money to have first three stages. Also officially this is not a Giro start in Apeldoorn, but a Giro start in Gelderland.

Okay, that explains it. Cheers
 
I'm so over the Dutch GT starts now. We've had the 2009 Vuelta, the 2010 and 2015 Tours de France, the 2010 and 2016 Giri. More GTs have started in the Netherlands in the last eight years than in France (2008, 2011 and 2013 Tours) and as many have started there as have started in Italy (2008, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2015 Giri). The Belfast start (which was similarly terrible, although there they actively went out of their way to do nothing of interest with the stages, at least in Gelderland they have an excuse) leading to the acceptance of the third rest day is the bigger problem I think here, because if the race started on the Saturday, we'd get the ITT then one sprint stage and it's far less frustrating as fans than when the additional rest day for travel is included so the only stage likely to be of any relevance is on Friday, and then we have two featureless, characterless, dour flat stages on the weekend.

The Dutch have a great history in cycling, and sure, the fans come out and support it. And the Dutch racing at the GTs doesn't have to be terrible either (the 2010 Giro and 2015 Tour show this). But the way this Giro has been designed, it's been designed to create great photographs, and that's all. I accept that the GTs are businesses and therefore the highest bidder gets priority, but you know, there have been a LOT of these types of start lately, and fans are starting to get frustrated. The 2012 Giro start in Denmark was possibly the dirt worst, because not only did they serve up featureless flat stages (even by Danish standards as I'm aware in most of the country, like the Netherlands, you can't serve up a mini-Amstel Gold unless you go to a specific town) but they included dangerous run-ins, which the Dutch have seemingly learned from. But one of the reasons Zomegnan went crazy in 2011 and started throwing mountain stages all over the place (too many MTFs in many people's eyes, including myself) was simple: the audience figures in Italy for sprint stages are tiny compared to those for the intermediate and mountain stages. Placing two stages that aren't likely to produce anything but sprints at the weekend seems very counterproductive. Why not sprint-TT-sprint instead if we're going Friday to Sunday? But since Zomegnan was fired, the Giro has been the race that has gone from the one GT that was guaranteed to put on something GC-relevant on each weekend day (except sometimes the first Sunday, after the first TT) to the GT that has put two featureless flat stages on the first weekend two years out of three.

Also, the organizers then get to go "wheeee, Marcel Kittel is wearing the maglia rosa! He's a big star!" and then he can announce like in the 2014 Tour that he has no intention of even trying to defend the jersey. It angers me that organizers continually want to throw a bone to a rider like that.

I didn't tune in yesterday, and I doubt I'll tune in today. That shouldn't be the state of affairs at the freaking Giro d'Italia.
 
Re:

Sasquatch said:
Couldn't they have taken one stage along the coast in the hope of cross winds? Groningen to Amsterdam along the coast would have been alright if it was doable.
Groningen to Amsterdam? First of all, Groningen is a long way from Apeldoorn, so I assume you'd have wanted them to ride from Apeldoorn to Groningen on stage 2? Then, along the coast? Groningen to Amsterdam is around 200km if they ride through Flevoland along the IJsselmeer and Markermeer (which are large lakes). If they wanted to ride along the coast, i.e. the coast of the Wadden Sea and then the coast of the North Sea, I think that would be way too long for 1 stage. :p
 
Sep 16, 2009
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Re: Re:

LaFlorecita said:
Sasquatch said:
Couldn't they have taken one stage along the coast in the hope of cross winds? Groningen to Amsterdam along the coast would have been alright if it was doable.
Groningen to Amsterdam? First of all, Groningen is a long way from Apeldoorn, so I assume you'd have wanted them to ride from Apeldoorn to Groningen on stage 2? Then, along the coast? Groningen to Amsterdam is around 200km if they ride through Flevoland along the IJsselmeer and Markermeer (which are large lakes). If they wanted to ride along the coast, i.e. the coast of the Wadden Sea and then the coast of the North Sea, I think that would be way too long for 1 stage. :p

Shorten it up a bit, but I was thinking something like a shortened version of the following. Maybe start at Heerenveen instead of Groningen.

https://www.google.com.au/maps/dir/Groningen,+Netherlands/Amsterdam,+Netherlands/@52.7733764,5.0373183,9z/data=!4m34!4m33!1m25!1m1!1s0x47c83286b462cca7:0xcb4b5086f9a6c8dc!2m2!1d6.5665018!2d53.2193835!3m4!1m2!1d5.1094835!2d52.9698694!3s0x47c8c9982d8042e9:0x3fa6ce8096c3ceaf!3m4!1m2!1d4.7511823!2d52.8361413!3s0x47cf4f6f13fb47ad:0xd211cd4ad6bb4d58!3m4!1m2!1d4.6799366!2d52.7380568!3s0x47cf5a5816d2e3ed:0x6371544fd54405fe!3m4!1m2!1d4.775939!2d52.6855843!3s0x47cf56d1c243389d:0x74966ea99272d6ab!1m5!1m1!1s0x47c63fb5949a7755:0x6600fd4cb7c0af8d!2m2!1d4.8951679!2d52.3702157!3e0

Take into account I know nothing about the Netherlands :p
 
Mar 13, 2016
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I just rode the last 50km of today's stage, as I live in Arnhem. The Posbank is a beautiful climb, but it won't be of any relevance - accept for a nice sprint for the mountain jersey. The 'descend' has one dangerous corner, which can't be overseen well because of the forest. The city circuit could have been much better: Arnhem is surrounded by hills, so even a kind of hilltop finish could have been possible. On the two bridges, there's a relatively strong wind from the side, so IF the wind increases and IF - and that's a big if - the riders really want to have a go for it instead of letting themselves being slaughtered by Kittel, echelons could be created on the bridges.
 
Re: Re:

Sasquatch said:
aha, I thought your idea was to go along the Northern coast as well :) it could be a nice stage, the Afsluitdijk (long a lovely person across the water) is 30km long so could create some great echelons, but I am not sure if it could be closed off for a cycling race. :)
 

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