Giro d'Italia 2023 Giro d'Italia: Who is going to win? First rest day poll.

[Gigs_98]

Contador survived how many crashes in the 2015 Giro? Dislocated his shoulder. Suffered in the end. Still won like a champ.

Great idea to compare Contador's 2nd and 3rd weeks to 2nd and 3rd weeks which literally haven't happened yet.

 

[Rackham]

Roglič of course.

And it won't be particularly close either. I also still consider Evenepoel his number one rival. We haven't even started the 'proper' Giro yet but there's nothing I've seen which makes me believe Rog won't be the best climber in this field. There's no Pog, no Vinge, no Superman. Rog at his normal climbing level has no match here.

Evenepoel meanwhile is an unknown factor still & notwithstanding the 'can he or can't he?' question regarding his high altitude climbing, he can also be extremely aggressive on stages where other riders can't take time, but he could. That's why he's dangerous. He has unpredictable qualities which makes him hard to control or read.

But the Ineos boys? Bravo for being so strong but it's not TGH & Geraint Thomas who'll stop Rogla from winning his Giro.

 

[Netserk]

So you're playing tit-for-tat? That's so nice of you. I'd say I'd expect better, but this is the internet so I'd be lying.

You say that like it's a bad thing. Morality rests on tit-for-tat dynamics.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Contador survived how many crashes in the 2015 Giro? Dislocated his shoulder. Suffered in the end. Still won like a champ.

Remind me how well Contador survived the crashes in the 2016 and 2014 Tours? This is not the own you think it is.

 

[Panda Claws]

Before the race:

Was jokingly hyperbolic though I think Remco had the best cards and still back him

 

[Netserk]

Remind me how well Contador survived the crashes in the 2016 and 2014 Tours? This is not the own you think it is.

Evenepoel slid on wet asphalt. He didn't break his leg.

 

[Ilmaestro99]

TGH has to be the favourite. If Ineos don't win this race with the strength they have then it would be extreme embarrassing.

I voted Jay vine. The dolomites will be the theatre of the absurd

 

[nightowl]

Picked Roglic before the race and I’m definitely a lot more confident now in that choice than I was then. Ineos do look scary good though but they’ll have to learn to ride aggressively if they want to take advantage of that

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Evenepoel slid on wet asphalt. He didn't break his leg.

Don't remember Contador breaking his leg in 2016.

And before you make the point that Contador also contracted a fever before pulling out, for all we know Evenepoel could be coming down with one as well. And we won't find out about anything like that so long as he's in the race.

(see, Evenepoel fans, I do defend him sometimes...)

 

[rallybanana]

I was one of the guys who voted for Tao before the start of the race, so I'm surely not gonna change my stance now.

Ditto

 

[Valv.Piti]

Before the race:

Why do you have to be to petty? Surely expecting Remco to win wasn't out of the ordinary and that can still happen, but as it stands now hes no longer the favorite. Thats pretty much the nature of stage racing, and I don't see anything wrong with expecting one thing before the race and something else 9 stages in.

Gosh, you are so annoying when it comes to Evenepoel, and Im not even a fan of his!

 

[Red Rick]

Geraint Thomas will win

Because I picked him in the pre race poll for the memes and because I am firmly on track to meme this into existence as well.

 

[Carols]

I'll stick with the guy I picked in the first poll: Roglic

 

[topcat]

Caruso will win because I picked him and I have some brilliant insight. He's unlikely to win but I'd get a blast if he did. It was totally reasonable to pick either Rog or Remco before the start, I put them as fairly even favourites before the start. Crashes and 9 stages have happened and now it's not so clear. It has become more interesting in the sense that there's at least 4 horses in the race now. Hopefully we'll get some long range stuff, but I won't hold my breath. It's fun to make predictions and it's fun to be right but right or wrong is not better or worse. At least the argument above is somewhat civilised.

 

[Lequack]

Can't believe Remco with a 1 minute advantage has just 12% of votes.

 

[Bonimenier]

Geraint Thomas will win

Because I picked him in the pre race poll for the memes and because I am firmly on track to meme this into existence as well.

Voting one rider and posting another rider: smart move! Doubling your chances on being correct.

 

[Pantani_lives]

The collective strength of Ineos can become a huge factor. They have five riders in the top 14 now. If they send Sivakov, Arensman or De Plus in an attack SQ will have to work, so Evenepoel might soon be isolated in the toughest mountain stages.

This can lead to an interesting battle for first Belgian: Evenepoel vs. De Plus.

 

[Red Rick]

Evenepoel - you can't just gatekeep or compare the impact of crashes. We don't really have a way of measuring the impact, unless we literally take Evenepoels T1 split as his pacing plan. Having said that, if we take a look at the takes he would win the Giro very comfortably and look at the underlying assumptions - which IMO was basically something along the lines of "It's just like Catalunya but Evenepoel will climb better than Roglic, and nobody else will come to play" then we can at the very least dismiss the latter part of that assumption. If we take a look at Catalunya itself, they actually lost an MTF to Ciccone, put a total of 15 seconds into the field on La Molina and then on Lo Port Almeida was as close to Evenepoel as the latter was to Roglic. They only really incraesed the GC gap much on the final circuit which is just prime Evenepoel real estate and where they didn't get chased that well. It's also not like Roglic or Evenepoel were completely invulnerable in UAE or Tirreno. I think it's a very big stretch to just say "if he peaked he would have won by a minute today" when he hasn't done that in any TT of such competition, or on any big climb for that matter.

Roglic - very solid. That first time split had me worried today, but I'm not gonna lie he looked very much in control of his effort yesterday and if it had finished on the top there I think he puts seconds into TGH and Thomas. His TT may be a little underwhelming compared to a few years ago but that still may partially be due to the flatness of the TTs, the Cervelo not being as good compared to other bikes as it used to be, or due to shoulder injury. He may be best he's ever been in absolute terms.

Thomas - very strong, especially considering how underwhelming his stage 1 ITT was and his TOTA was. Still, I'm not sure how confident we can be he's better than in the Tour last year, which I firmly believe he'll need to be to win

TGH - Very strong, obviously, and there's basically one GT to base any predictions on for him, which is the 2020 Giro, when he was basically a similar level to the best of Hindley maybe? Maybe he can be a slight bit better.

Now who can win it? I'm fairly sure Evenepoel faces a really uphill battle and that he needs to be 100% by Friday, and I'm pretty sceptical about that right now. This TT win was closer to Suisse 2022 than anything else, in addition to that I was sceptical about his monster stage climbing to begin with. For Geraint Thomas I'm sceptical because he looked solidly worse than TGH on I Cappuccini yesterday and he should simply be taking more time out of the latter in a 35 km ITT. I'm 90% sure TGH is gonna finish ahead of Thomas. I think it's 80% between Roglic and TGH, and I favor Roglic there. Ineos have the better team, but none of their domestiques should drop Kuss on the big climbs, and as I think Roglic is also the best descender and sprinter out of the lot, I think he's simply in the drivers seat right now.

 

[Red Rick]

Voting one rider and posting another rider: smart move! Doubling your chances on being correct.

I didn't think, I only thought of my meme vote later and I forgot @Netserk won't let me change votes.

 

[JosefK]

Primoz is doing much better than I would have expected a week ago--losing just 17 seconds to Remco on a long, flat ITT. Great toughness. At this point, Rog seems to me to be not that far off his best form of previous years, but still a bit off. On the other hand, TGH is far and above his best ever (including the 2020 Giro). Because of this unexpected factor, I think TGH will win it. He also has support of the best team at this race, and the one-two punch of G and Tao may well be too hard for Roglic to overcome. Also, it may be too early to count out the race leader, Remco. He might yet find a way to recover that anger.

 

[Netserk]

Voting one rider and posting another rider: smart move! Doubling your chances on being correct.

It was not exactly an invisible vote.

 

[topt]

I am just wondering has Tao ever in his life droped Roglic ?I mean , I fail to see how could he beat him

 

[Bonimenier]

I am just wondering has Tao ever in his life droped Roglic ?I mean , I fail to see how could he beat him

He has another ITT to take 4 seconds and just follow Roglic in all the other stages.

 

[topt]

He has another ITT to take 4 seconds and just follow Roglic in all the other stages.

has he ever beaten Rogla in a TT before ? Will he be able to outsprint him for bonus secs?

 

[Bonimenier]

has he ever beaten Rogla in a TT before ?

Today and on stage 1