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2021 Giro Route Rumours

Page 15 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
I think if you were to look at how much TT'ing a route has and how good the race ends up being you'd find next to near correlation. But that's not because TT's don't matter, but you can screw up a route by including too many TT kilometres just as much as you can mess it up by not including enough. The 2012 Tour had two really long, flat TT's and a total of 4 mountain stages you could take somewhat serious, and I'm emphazising the "somewhat" here. That's not a balanced, that's stupid. Meanwhile the 2017 Giro didn't suffer from the amount of TT'ing one bit.

The reason I usually want a lot of TT'ing isn't because TT's are great on their own. They need to come in combination with genuinely tough mountain stages to balance it out. If you don't have those stages little TT'ing is just as balanced, but why would I want a balanced race with no good racing and big attacks when I can have a balanced race with good racing and big attacks.

Also, just want to mention that you simply cannot put the success of the 2010 giro down to any factor any organizer had in hand. Sure, you can maximize the chances of chaos by putting the right stages in the right places, but for the amount of randomness that happened in the first two weeks of that race you simply need the stars to align. One thing that is certain is that it didn't have anything to do with TT's or the lack thereof.
It depends so much on who shows up. I'd say the lower limit is a lot harder than the upper limit, and the latter one is super dependent on who's actually there. Also think placement of the ITTs is crucial, and earlier ITTs are far better than having the big ITT super late.

IMO the minimum should be like 40km, with probably an prologue and a 35 km ITT.
 
Canazei-Sega di Ala has been officially confirmed by the province of Trentino:
https://www.ufficiostampa.provincia.tn.it/Comunicati/Giro-d-Italia-2021-lo-staff-Rcs-in-Trentino
I hope we get Passo San Valentino from North right before the final climb, it would be this climb minus the final 4.5km
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Well, 5 out the 6 highest rated GT the laste decade by this forum had less than 50 km TT. It's really, really not a prerequiste for an entertaining GT with a lot of action.

This is not a great argument. Not many GT's in the previous decade had many ITT km's, and some of those that had at least a half decent amount were won by riders who aren't exactly very popular on this forum.

Was the 2003 TDF hindered by having so many ITT km's? Or 2007 for that matter?
 
This is not a great argument. Not many GT's in the previous decade had many ITT km's, and some of those that had at least a half decent amount were won by riders who aren't exactly very popular on this forum.
Oh yes, it is. The main argument for more TT kms are the they make races more entertaning. And some go so far that it's sounds like they mean that it is a prerequisite for good Grand Tour. But a majority of cycling fans rates Grand Tours with a relatively small amount of TT kms highest. It doesn't mean that more TT kms would be wrong in every case, it just mean that it isn't a necessity with 100+ km of ITT, not even 60-70 km.
 
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Oh yes, it is. The main argument for more TT kms are the they make races more entertaning. And some go so far that it's sounds like they mean that it is a prerequisite for good Grand Tour. But a majority of cycling fans rates Grand Tours with a relatively small amount of TT kms highest. It doesn't mean that more TT kms would be wrong in every case, it just mean that it isn't a necessity with 100+ km of ITT, not even 60-70 km.

Well, if you are going to have less than 50 kms of ITT, then there should be less high mountain stages imo.

The 2011 and 2012 TDF's had disappointing impacts on future parcours. A really short mountain stage is great, let's have more of those! And, too much ITT is bad, let's drastically reduce that!

The thing is, is that context needs to be taken into account. The short mountain stage worked partly because there was a proper length mountain stage before it (logical conclusion: not all lengthy mountain stages are bad.). Likewise with the 2012 Tour, it wasn't so much the ITT, but that there weren't a lot of decisive high mountains. To make matters worse, the two strongest GC riders were on the same team (they also happened to be the strongest GC riders in the ITT).

Without remembering all of the details, the 2018 TDF didn't have a lot of ITT, correct? 2 x 50 km ones could have worked, seeing Thomas, Froome, Dumoulin, Roglic (all strong in that discipline) going head to head.
 
Well, if you are going to have less than 50 kms of ITT, then there should be less high mountain stages imo.

The 2011 and 2012 TDF's had disappointing impacts on future parcours. A really short mountain stage is great, let's have more of those! And, too much ITT is bad, let's drastically reduce that!
No, not necessarily. Did the Giros in 2010, 2011, 2015 and 2018 have less high mountains? This forum rated this 4 of the 6 best Grand Tours the last decade. All had 50 km of ITT or less, two of the had less than 30 kms.

Well-designed and tough mountain stages are a prerequisite for a good Grand Tour.
Sheer luck and coincindence are also important.. And that includes all from form and form curves of the top GC contenders to a factor like the weather
But a large amount of ITT kms are in no way necessary for a really good Grand Tour. If that's your clear opinion, you are obviously in a clear minority among cycling fans.
 
Oh yes, it is. The main argument for more TT kms are the they make races more entertaning. And some go so far that it's sounds like they mean that it is a prerequisite for good Grand Tour. But a majority of cycling fans rates Grand Tours with a relatively small amount of TT kms highest. It doesn't mean that more TT kms would be wrong in every case, it just mean that it isn't a necessity with 100+ km of ITT, not even 60-70 km.

Also, there are tons of examples of Grand Tours that were bad because of many ITT kilometres, and very few that benefitted from that, yet it's always the few that are highlighted to support this very strange viewpoint that many ITT kilometres are a must have.
 
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I think that everyone who argues in favour of more ITT km than the current norm also argue in favour of big, well designed and well paced mountain stages.


Tour 2012 was indeed such a riveting race. And the lowest ranked in the 2010's. And the one with most ITT kilometres.

And the only one with more than 100 kilometres, so your statement is quite confusing.

That's embarrassing. I recalled it as just under 100 km, which was confirmed when I quickly checked CQ. But they had the last ITT 1.5 km too short.

Okay, so the strong correlation is for GTs with less than 102 km of ITT! All the bad ones had less than that!!1
 
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GT should crown the best allrounder, not the best murito 140km stage Sprinter. Long ITT plus long and hard MT stages. It is no rocket science but saddly it is not what todays snowflake fans want. It is too complicated for them to follow. They only understand murito finishes and GTs that are decided by seconds.
 
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GT should crown the best allrounder, not the best murito 140km stage Sprinter. Long ITT plus long and hard MT stages. It is no rocket science but saddly it is not what todays snowflake fans want. It is too complicated for them to follow. They only understand murito finishes and GTs that are decided by seconds.
Still, much ITT is not necessary for a good and entertaining GT. And tough mountain stages are on their own much more interesting and entertaining than a 50+ km flat ITT.
 
I think that everyone who argues in favour of more ITT km than the current norm also argue in favour of big, well designed and well paced mountain stages.
I don't know I can't remember if Bavarianrider has ever ranted about anything other than more 50km + flat ITTs.

But yeah.

Generally I do think mountain stage design and team strength are more important than the total amount of ITT kilometers.
 
In my opinion, there's room for everything with the current field.
I think they all can handle 100+k's of time trialing as well as 200+k stages with 5000+ meters of altitude gain. Muritos, high mountain miniatures (2018 style)... I don't think anybody would be favoured.
 
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