Giro d'Italia 2017 STAGE 21: Monza – Milano 29.3 km ITT

["Jeff"]

Re:

Too many time trial kilometres in this race considering there are so few all-round GC riders that exist any more. Every guy can make a race in the mountains but then the most boring aspect of cycling makes the decisive difference.

Dumoulin will easily win.

Luckily you didnt watch cycling in the 70s-80s-90s if you think 70 km is too much.

 

[Moviefan1203]

I thought this Giro had a good balance of climbing and time trialing. I wish the Tour would have this kind of balance this year.

 

[luckyboy]

Yes Pinot had a bad day but it's not like Dumoulin was super aggressive to win. It was a TT effort to come form behind on an awfully-designed stage.

It's not that I don't like Dumoulin, it's that this style of racing is not at all exciting to me. Same with any GC guy who destroys time trials.

I think there are so few riders like this nowadays that to hold so many TT kms is a bad idea for the race in terms of excitement.

 

[Tonton]

70 km of ITT is less than what would be considered enough ITT. I wouldn't say, as many state, that 100 km is the magic number, but seriously, 70 km, if nothing else, is not enough. My $0.02.

 

[luckyboy]

Re: Re:

Too many time trial kilometres in this race considering there are so few all-round GC riders that exist any more. Every guy can make a race in the mountains but then the most boring aspect of cycling makes the decisive difference.

Dumoulin will easily win.

Luckily you didnt watch cycling in the 70s-80s-90s if you think 70 km is too much.[/quote]

You can't compare rider types of the 70s and now. And yes the Indurain Tours are my worst nightmare

 

[LaFlorecita]

Actually, in the current era, I'd say between 50 and 70km, depending on the number of tough mountain stages.

 

[lenric]

70 km of ITT is less than what would be considered enough ITT. I wouldn't say, as many state, that 100 km is the magic number, but seriously, 70 km, if nothing else, is not enough. My $0.02.

Agreed. The difference was that this year a TT specialist rode the race and could still defend himself on the mountains. If you take TD off, this conversation would have never started.

If there is something about the route that shouldn't be criticized is the amount of ITT kms.

 

[Valv.Piti]

I think its wrong to put an exact number

Generally, I'd think you want to balance it and 70 km seems very fine this year compared to the mountains. Maybe a tad too much as some of the designs (mountain stages) were underwhelming, but still plenty of opportunities for climbers. Thats why you can argue 36 km of ITT in TdF actually is balanced since the mountains are horrible. That said, it doesn't have to be balanced in my opinion, some times you can have GTs designed in favour of climbers, other times time trialists and thats perfectly fine for me as long as its done properly.

 

[Cance > TheRest]

Re:

Yes Pinot had a bad day but it's not like Dumoulin was super aggressive to win. It was a TT effort to come form behind on an awfully-designed stage.

It's not that I don't like Dumoulin, it's that this style of racing is not at all exciting to me. Same with any GC guy who destroys time trials.

I think there are so few riders like this nowadays that to hold so many TT kms is a bad idea for the race in terms of excitement.

I don't agree with that logic. If there was no time trials, we would have had a bunch of GC-contenders with no incentive to attack from far away in the mountains. At least we have seen the biggest riders (Quintana and Nibal) try something from far away, albeit largely unsuccesfully. The fact that they have not been able to distance Dumoulin sufficiently, simply because they are not good enough, should not serve as an arguments against time trials in a grand tour.

 

[staubsauger]

I think there should've been even more tt kilometers. There simply should've been a mtt up to Tre Cime or Plan de Corones as well. The Gavia should've been added to the Mortirolo-Stelvio stage. The Grappa should've been taken from the harder site. The Blockhaus stage must've included more cols. Oh and of course there shouldn't have been any rest days so there would've been enough stages to visit Fauniera and the Crostis-Zoncolan combo. Simply because you need to balance out the 33 kilometers ttt on day 1!

 

[luckyboy]

70 km of ITT is less than what would be considered enough ITT. I wouldn't say, as many state, that 100 km is the magic number, but seriously, 70 km, if nothing else, is not enough. My $0.02.

Even considering what kind of rider most GC riders are nowadays? There are so few GC riders who are all-rounders now that making a 100km TT Grand Tour is handing the race to a Froome, Dumoulin, Porte.. The rest are climbers who can do a 'quite good' time trial.

GTs should be designed to give maximum excitement, and if that means designing for the majority of GC riders to fight on, then so be it.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

I don't agree with people who think that there should be a set number or set range of TT kms. There used to be too great a predominance of routes with lots of TTing, now there's too much of a uniform lean towards climber's routes. They should vary the parcours of GTs wildly from edition to edition, giving a wide range of different types of riders the potential to compete.

 

[lenric]

70 km of ITT is less than what would be considered enough ITT. I wouldn't say, as many state, that 100 km is the magic number, but seriously, 70 km, if nothing else, is not enough. My $0.02.

Even considering what kind of rider most GC riders are nowadays? There are so few GC riders who are all-rounders now that making a 100km TT Grand Tour is handing the race to a Froome, Dumoulin, Porte.. The rest are climbers who can do a 'quite good' time trial.

GTs should be designed to give maximum excitement, and if that means designing for the majority of GC riders to fight on, then so be it.

4 or 5 posts later, you're still missing the point.

 

[Forever The Best]

Re:

Actually, in the current era, I'd say between 50 and 70km, depending on the number of tough mountain stages.

I think its wrong to put an exact number

Generally, I'd think you want to balance it and 70 km seems very fine this year compared to the mountains. Maybe a tad too much as some of the designs were underwhelming, but still plenty of opportunities for climbers. Thats why you can argue 36 km of ITT in TdF actually is balanced since the mountains are horrible. That said, it doesn't have to be balanced in my opinion, some times you can have GTs designed in favour of climbers, other times time trialists and thats perfectly fine for me as long as its done properly.

I have 120 km of ITT in my Giro which I am posting in the Race Design Thread (110 of them are dead flat, the other 10 are some uphill some downhill) but I have 7 mountain stages and also many hilly stages some of which have 1C climbs (my 9th stage has Monte Amiata and 18 km of sterrato for example). So the ITT kms depend on the mountain/hilly stages mostly.

 

[deValtos]

Lol this is the first rouleur we've had (hopefully, not done yet) win a GT since wiggo in 2012, though I can see why that race might've put some people off. :lol:

Climbers have had free reign to win GT's in these past few years and it's nice to see a course that doesn't outright favour them for once.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

70 km of ITT is less than what would be considered enough ITT. I wouldn't say, as many state, that 100 km is the magic number, but seriously, 70 km, if nothing else, is not enough. My $0.02.

Even considering what kind of rider most GC riders are nowadays? There are so few GC riders who are all-rounders now that making a 100km TT Grand Tour is handing the race to a Froome, Dumoulin, Porte.. The rest are climbers who can do a 'quite good' time trial.

GTs should be designed to give maximum excitement, and if that means designing for the majority of GC riders to fight on, then so be it.

Froome is the favourite on any parcours. Porte can be great or can lose half an hour on any parcours. Dumoulin certainly didn't walk away with an easy win here.

I broadly approve of the ASO trying to favour challengers to the currently dominant rider by slanting the Tour parcours in their direction. In recent times that has meant almost abolishing the TT so as to give pure climbers a shot against Froome. Maybe soon they will be adding 120 kms to allow Dumoulin rather than Quintana to have a crack at the champ.

 

[talbet]

I wonder how much Dumoulin have left if he was burning 390 watts today.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Re:

I think there should've been even more tt kilometers. There simply should've been a mtt up to Tre Cime or Plan de Corones as well. The Gavia should've been added to the Mortirolo-Stelvio stage. The Grappa should've been taken from the harder site. The Blockhaus stage must've included more cols. Oh and of course there shouldn't have been any rest days so there would've been enough stages to visit Fauniera and the Crostis-Zoncolan combo. Simply because you need to balance out the 33 kilometers ttt on day 1!

Its really disappointing.

Mortirolo!
.. Damn, from the easy side.

Stelvio!
.. not from Prato, again.

Grappa!
.. from the easiest side possible!

Dolomites!
.. lets do an insanely *** lap in Ortisei because we obviously need to climb Pontives!

Blockhaus was from the right side, but still they didn't go to the top, but I guess I can't complain there.

 

[mavmav]

Re:

Yes Pinot had a bad day but it's not like Dumoulin was super aggressive to win. It was a TT effort to come form behind on an awfully-designed stage.

It's not that I don't like Dumoulin, it's that this style of racing is not at all exciting to me. Same with any GC guy who destroys time trials.

I think there are so few riders like this nowadays that to hold so many TT kms is a bad idea for the race in terms of excitement.

Sorry, but again, Que?

It was Dumoulin who forced all the other guys to up the tempo way before the last MTF the past week. Without Dumoulin it would have been a Movistar led procession to the bottom of the last climb were more often then not it would end up a game of out-kicking your opponent in the last few Ks.

Without Dumoulin, the past 5 days would've been a lot less exciting. I'm not saying Dumoulin was exciting, at times he was imho, but his presence help make it exiting. The exact opposite of what you're claiming.

 

[luckyboy]

4 or 5 posts later, you're still missing the point.

What was your point? You just listed TT lengths with no context.

The last two years show me where there was a Froome or Dumoulin competing. Nobody was an incredibly time trialist so you can have 100km or 5km and it would still be an exciting fight.

 

[LaFlorecita]

I wonder how much Dumoulin have left if he was burning 390 watts today.

Dumoulin probably went as deep as Quintana and Nibali. He just pushed more watts because he can push more watts.

 

[Kafviar]

Re: Re:

After a rest day, the whole team under-performed: Ludvigsson 94th, yikes.

According to his brother on twitter he was not allowed to go full gas. Probably the same with Rechienbach. That TT was a very good fit for Tobias and I think he could have done something really good there if he would have been allowed to have a go.

 

[luckyboy]

70 km of ITT is less than what would be considered enough ITT. I wouldn't say, as many state, that 100 km is the magic number, but seriously, 70 km, if nothing else, is not enough. My $0.02.

Even considering what kind of rider most GC riders are nowadays? There are so few GC riders who are all-rounders now that making a 100km TT Grand Tour is handing the race to a Froome, Dumoulin, Porte.. The rest are climbers who can do a 'quite good' time trial.

GTs should be designed to give maximum excitement, and if that means designing for the majority of GC riders to fight on, then so be it.

Froome is the favourite on any parcours. Porte can be great or can lose half an hour on any parcours. Dumoulin certainly didn't walk away with an easy win here.

I broadly approve of the ASO trying to favour challengers to the currently dominant rider by slanting the Tour parcours in their direction. In recent times that has meant almost abolishing the TT so as to give pure climbers a shot against Froome. Maybe soon they will be adding 120 kms to allow Dumoulin rather than Quintana to have a crack at the champ.

This is what I'm saying. TTs make such big time gaps, and there are so few really good GC contender time trialists, so design something that will bring the most contenders together - it's only in the interest of the organisers to do that.

 

["Jeff"]

Re: Re:

Too many time trial kilometres in this race considering there are so few all-round GC riders that exist any more. Every guy can make a race in the mountains but then the most boring aspect of cycling makes the decisive difference.

Dumoulin will easily win.

Luckily you didnt watch cycling in the 70s-80s-90s if you think 70 km is too much.

You can't compare rider types of the 70s and now. And yes the Indurain Tours are my worst nightmare[/quote]Like someone else already said, 70 km total is not very much.

You sound a little butthurt. Dumoulin is not ''the best'' climber and should improve a lot to ever come close to the podium in the Tour. Though, he was one of the best climbers in this Giro and is a good TT specialist which has been a part of GT's since day one.

Please stop with whining and enjoy.

 

[klintE]

70 km of ITT is less than what would be considered enough ITT. I wouldn't say, as many state, that 100 km is the magic number, but seriously, 70 km, if nothing else, is not enough. My $0.02.

IMO, 21 stages, 7 for sprinters, 7 for ITT, 7 for climbers.