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Giro d'Italia 2020, stage 7: Matera - Brindisi 143 km

Echelons alarm!

Stage 7: Matera – Brindisi 143 km
Friday, October 9th, 13:00 CEST


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Technical Overview:
It’s stage 7, and only now comes the first obvious bunch sprint of the race. From Matera to Brindisi there is not a climb in sight. The stage is very short and on straight and wide roads, with the two intermediate sprints quite close together in the middle of the stage, in Taranto and Grottaglie. The home straight is 1.2 km long.

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What to expect:
Mass sprint of course. Only the wind can spice this up. And, fair warning, wind is a definite possibility in this area, so maybe we’ll be lucky.

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Brindisi
 
Luckily Nibali is super-attentive rider. Honestly I feel like he has more tactical sense than the rest of Trek combined.

Edit: Aaand I just thought about last year Giro, so let's say that it's more about being where you need to be rather than strict 'tactical sense'.

Trek also seems to think that they are Ineos 2.0 and stay at the front all the time. Meaning that Nibali is in a great position but runs out of teammates in the final most of the time.
 
Usually in GT's the positioning of cross winds in the stage determines whether teams will try to split in the bunch - They will go for it if it occurs in the last 50 kms while if it's 80 to 100 kms away nothing will happen.
I can only remember one instance - Valverde in the 2013 TdF where he lost 10 minutes. Just checked, it was 86km out (thought it was longer actually).
 
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Wind is predicted to be 25-30 kph from north/northwest all day tomorrow.

That means cross/tailwind the entire day, which is the optimum conditions for crosswind attacking.

We might very well see a lot of GC action, not least with the danger looming, of several mountains getting cancelled later in the race.
I will literally meet same people tommorrow as I met during crosswind stage at TDF. So obviously there will be another one.
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I would like to see what Gaviria has to offer in the sprints. Demare obviously a favorite to win these stages when he is in form. If he wins tomorrow again I reckon he might leave with 4 or 5 stage wins from this Giro. When was the last time a sprinter won so many stages in a GT race? I remember Trentin winning a bunch in Vuelta few years back and Kittel had a good year in TDF 2017.
 
I would like to see what Gaviria has to offer in the sprints. Demare obviously a favorite to win these stages when he is in form. If he wins tomorrow again I reckon he might leave with 4 or 5 stage wins from this Giro. When was the last time a sprinter won so many stages in a GT race?

Viviani won 4 stages in 2018, Gaviria the year before. Last one to win 5 was Cav in 2013