Cookster15 said:
The other thing about last year you underestimate is how cold weather affects the riders. In the cold your muscles deplete glycogen reserves much faster. So yes maybe less climbing last year but not necessarily easier.
Yes it was easier. Significantly easier. For starters the Val Martelo stage was abandoned. There's no way you can argue not riding the stage was harder than riding it. And that was a brutal stage that even in a heatwave would have taken them into cold temperatures regardless (and will this year).
Secondly on Galibier they finished 5k earlier because of the cold. The temperature at the adjusted finish line on Galibier wasn't neccesarily that much worse than what they would have faced on a normal day at the original finish line had the race been allowed to go there.
Thirdly you are talking about loads of mountains removed. On the Galibier they not only moved the finish forward they also neutralized both Mont Cenis and its descent. IIRC they did a similar thing with Jaffreau. On Val Martelo they took out the entire stage (3 brutal mountains including Cima Coppi - now thats cold), and on the queen stage they took a 5 climb stage that rivaled Gardeccia for difficulty, and made it a 1 climb stage.
You think the cold made up for the difficulty of having 8 mountains removed from the race, another 2 shortened? I think the 5 hardest mountains in the race were all either shortened or taken out?
Lets look at the gaps then on Galibier the entire field was within 12 seconds. THats on Galibier which is rated as one of the hardest MTF's in the world. On Val Martelo they were nonexistent of course. That's 2 stages where one could expect gaps opening up quite easily, neutralized.
Because no matter how hard the snow is, riders are simply not going to lose as much time if they hit the first test of the day 8km from the finish as they will if they have to start riding hard 50k from the end. Same reason someone will lose more time over a 50k tt than a 8k prologue.
Those stages also broke up the difficulty of the gt. Galibier took place the day after a mountain stage instead they took it easy. Val Martelo was supposed to link the tt and the queen stage. Instead, rather than have multiple mountain stgaes in a row, the mountain part of the race was broken up into a few isolated days of racing sandwhiched between effective rest days.
Penultimately when Evans has cracked it has been in long mountain stages. And that's not just Evans, riders generally if they crack, it will happen when they have to ride multiple climbs, or at least long distances (like Fuente de where they rode hard for 30k rather than 5). It doesn't happen anywhere near as much on single mtfs.
And the lack of mountains also destroyed the opportunity for breakaways to form and for Cadel's (and Uran's ) rivals to attack them Lampre had Niemiec AND Scarponi within touching distance of Evans. They couldn't try anything. AG2R had Pozzovivo AND Betancur. they couldn't try anything, once the mulitple mountains which serve as opportunities to ride hard, isolate Evans, attack him, were taken out.
Finally, its going to be cold this year anyway. Stelvio is 2700m, they will probably run into some snow and 0-5 degree temperatures.
And btw the worst thing for cyclists (as this past Vuelta showed) is not so much the absolute cold (they can handle it). Its the temperature changes from hot to cold. The Vuelta last year had loads of abandons due to the cold. And yet in absolute terms those temperatures never reached anywhere near the lows of the 2013 Giro. Its becuase they were moving from heat to cold so quickly.
That was no worse last year than this year. In fact it was probably better last year when the whole race was cold, and they avoided drastic altitude changes by neutralizing parts of stages. Tomorrow its going to be 30 degrees. The next week they are going to spend more or less at sea level (with a few mtfs up to around 1000). Then on Tuesday they will go up to 2500 down to 1000, up to 2700, down to almost sea level, then up again to 2000.
Thats going to be just as much a shock to the system as last year, even if there are no golden snowflakes falling on their jerseys to emphasize it.