Stage 4: Castello Tesino - Pianezze (Valdobbiadene), 142 km
Official start at 10:35
Expected finish at around 14:30
After a day of sprinting (and crashing) it's time for another uphill finish, but this one could create some substantial gaps between the very best riders.
This stage probably won't be decided until the MTF, but unlike the Aprica stage, there are more than just one climb to de dealt with. The parcours for the first 130 km resembles a half decent Tirreno-Adriatico stage with multiple shorter hills that are sometimes fairly steep. The route also shares some of its roads with
stage 17 from the 2014 men's Giro, won by legendary maverick Stefano Pirazzi, Bardiani's third stage win during the race, but the final on that day was ridden from the opposite direction and ended with a flat finish in Vittorio Veneto.
The first categorised climb, Cugnan-Vena d'Oro, begins after 60 km, but there are a selection of bumps and lumps beforehand.
12 km after the top of it, the road goes up again for 2 km.
The next challenge is the very steep Muro di Ca' del Poggio, which we've seen used mutliple times in the men's Giro. Here it is once again placed far from the finish (40 km to be exact), but it could still create some carnage, especially in a breakaway with climbers of different levels.
The next 20-ish km is the flattest part of the whole stage, until they reach the climb to Santa Stefano with 18 km left.
After a short descent to Valdobbiadene, the wheat will soon get separated from the chaff during the last 11 km towards Pianezze, which is situated 420m (altitude-wise) below the end of the paved road up Monte Cesen. The climb is fairly consistent with gradients between 7 and 8%, but there are shorter sections above 10%. The race won't necessarily be won here, but it sure can be lost.
While the Aprica finish made you think back 10 years, we'll have to go back 30 years to understand the history behind this one.
In 1993 a young, small Italian climber by the name of Fabiana Luperini had first emerged on to the scene, riding for the Sanson team, led by former rider Marino Amadori, who would later join Mercantone Uno for the last year's of Marco Pantani's career. Luperini had missed the Giro due the pressure of studying for high school exams, but at the second edition of the Tour Cycliste Féminin, she had showed what she was made of.
She was unable to match Leontien van Moorsel who won 5 of the 14 stages, but on the MTFs at Luz Ardiden and Vaujany she had been among the strongest riders. Before the final stage to Alpe d'Huez, she was still fighting for a podium. But on the way to Le Bourg-d'Oisans she took a bite of an apple, the forbidden fruit, which her stomach couldn't properly digest, and she ended up 4th in GC.
The next season she was determined to make the final step to stardom and she started training harder and eating less, but her body couldn't handle that either and she missed the Giro once again. That race was instead won by the one year older Michela Fanini, who would tragically leave this world after a car accident only a few months later. Luperini was able to race in France, but not at the level from the year before and she finished 14th in the end.
In 1995, she cracked the code. A dominant victory at the Giro del Trentino in May made her one of the favourites for the Giro, and this time she would finally be taking the start. Luzia Zberg, the older sister of Beat and Markus, had finished on the podium the two previous years and was expected to be fighting for the win once again, from a field that also featured a then 46 year old Maria Canins among others.
Stage 4 finished at Pianezze and it didn't take long for a determined Luperini (who probably wasn't riding paniapples this time around) to drop everyone but Zberg. With around 7 km to go, the 40-ish kg. Pantanina said arrivederci to her Swiss companion and eventually reached the line with a gap of more than 1:30, to win her the first of a total 15 Giro stages. The second came just 24 hours later at San Martino di Castrozza. She won the GC by 2:30 in the end, the first of five overall titles. A month later she obliterated everyone in France and won by 8 minutes ahead of Jeannie Longo and 10 ahead of Zberg in 3rd,
before returning home to celebrate the achievement.
Luperini reaching the line at Pianezze
She went on to win the Giro-Tour double three times in a row between '95 and '97, as well as another Giro in '98, but it then took another decade before she rather surprisingly won her last Giro at the age of 34. The last of her 90-ish career wins came at he Giro del Trentino in 2012, two years before she retired. She later worked as a DS for Corratec until last season.
The 1995 race was a duel between an Italian and a Swiss, which could possibly become the case this year as well. The last time a Swiss rider won the Giro happened 10 yeas after Luperini's maiden victory, when Nicole Brändli was victorious for the third time. That race even went through Switzerland. The penultimate stage, on the 9th of July, exactly 20 years ago today, started in Briga and went over the Passo Sempione/Simplonpass before finishing in Domodossola across the border. That stage was attended by a then 13-year old Elisa Longo Borghini.
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