- Feb 9, 2013
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Shamelessly stolen from Devil's Elbow's most excellent stage-by-stage analysis:
The longest stage of the Giro. At 2600 metres of elevation gain, the sprinters will have to do a bit of work, but with a flat final third it shouldn’t deter them.
Map and profile
Start
The Giro continues its habit of only using stage hosts that date back to at least Antiquity (so far, only Tirana has bucked the trend) with a transfer west to Potenza. Potenza was founded by the Lucanians in the 7th century BC and soon became one of the more important centres in the region. Lucania (basically modern Basilicata, only extending a bit further in all directions) usually allied with Roma during the Samnite Wars of the 4th and early 3rd century BC, before making the ill-fated decision to ally with Pyrrhus in the famed Pyrrhic Wars – the first major engagement between Roma and the Greeks – which led to conquest in 272 BC. Even in Roman times, Lucania/Basilicata was an area of little significance. Consisting almost entirely of mountainous terrain, its poor soils, lack of natural resources and logistically-challenging topography have traditionally left the region a backwater. In spite of both this and an unfortunate habit of continually supporting the losing side in the civil wars of the 1st century BC, Potenza did become a city of sorts, growing to be the (then de facto) capital of the Lucanian interior.
The central function of Potenza was consolidated in the Middle Ages by the feudal and religious structures. In spite of this, it was traditionally one of the more impoverished cities within the Kingdom of Napoli, both due to the general lack of economic viability of Basilicata and because of repeated earthquakes. Perhaps for this reason, it was one of the first places in the kingdom to declare against the ruling Bourbon branch during the abortive French invasion of 1799 (this was likely a key reason why the French made it the capital of Basilicata upon annexation in 1806) and then again during the wars of Italian unification in 1860. Now I could end this introduction with the further misfortune of Potenza since then – the Allied bombing of 1943, the devastating earthquake in 1980 which ravaged both Basilicata and Campania, the persistent economic issues of the South which are at their worst in these areas – but I’ll go for a fun fact instead. To deal with the great elevation difference within the city, Potenza has in the past decades installed a public elevator network that is now reportedly the largest in Europe.
In the Giro, this will be Potenza’s eighteenth appearance, the last time having come three years ago when Koen Bouwman won the stage from the breakaway. And just to indicate how much the Giro hates north-to-south routes: for the eighteenth time, it is visited in the first half of the race.
The longest of said escalators (picture by Caterina Policaro at flickr)
Route
For the first time this Giro, we have a pretty tough start to the stage. The neutralisation is already uphill, and when the flag drops the riders still have the last 5 kilometres of the profile below to go to crest the Valico Monte Romito.
A twisty, but shallow descent takes the riders into the Platano valley. The way out of it is the same as in the 2023 stage to Lago Laceno, up the first KOM of the day: Valico di Monte Carruozzo. This is comfortably the hardest climb of the day, but the gradients are mostly unremarkable. It also features an intermediate sprint a quarter of the way up, in Monte Lucano.
A fairly easy descent brings the riders to the highway they will spend most of the next 55 kilometres on. The only deviation is into Lioni, for an intermediate sprint. The nameless climb in this section is 4.9k at 6.1%. The riders finally leave the highway in the Avellino urban area. Usually that means it’s time to head up Montevergine, but this time RCS have an even shallower climb in stall. There is a whole bunch of false flat (2% average) included in the official categorisation, the profile below shows only the final 6.9 kilometres of the climb.
With that, the day’s climbing is over, and most of the remainder of the stage is spent within the Neapolitan urban area. They could have kept the length much closer to 200 kilometres, but instead we have a number of detours. Places of note in this final stretch include Nola, Emperor Augustus’ deathbed, the ‘triangle of death’. where the mafia has produced Europe’s largest illegal waste dump causing severe contamination and increased prevalence of diseases such as cancer, and the bonification sprint in Brusciano.
Finish
The exact same route as in 2023, when Alessandro De Marchi and Simon Clarke were caught at the last second and Mads Pedersen won the first and (prior to this edition) only Giro stage of his career. Just enough corners to string things out a little bit, but never technical.
And this is where we talk about Napoli, again – it’s the fourth stage finish here in as many years. This is all the more remarkable because, after 41 appearances between the first-ever Giro in 1909 and 1969, there had only been four further visits in the 53 editions between then and the current run. But of course, there is far more to Neapolitan history than the Giro to say the least, starting with its original name from which that adjective is derived: Neapolis. As the name suggests, its foundation in the late 6th century BC was by the Greeks, and it soon rose to be the most important Greek colony on the Tyrrhenian Sea. The decision to ally with the Samnites in the Samnite Wars cost it its independence in 325 BC, but the Romans allowed it a great deal of autonomy for centuries and its Greek character endured well into the imperial period. By this time, it had already become the most important city in historically prosperous Campania following Capua’s ill-fated decision to ally with Carthage in the Second Punic War.
As elsewhere, the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire led to difficult times (although Napoli never relinquished its status as one of the leading cities in Italy), with the city notably being successfully besieged three times (twice by the Byzantines, once by the Ostrogoths) during the Byzantine conquest of Italy in the mid-6th century. The Byzantines held onto Napoli as the Lombards erased most of their gains in the early 7th century, but as the early Arab conquests threatened the empire’s survival for most of the rest of the century they were forced to grant many of their Italian possessions autonomy (Venice is the other notable example). Napoli was therefore made a duchy in 661 and soon became de facto independent. This independence lasted until 1137, when the duchy was forced to submit to the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Now I won’t bother you with all the subsequent ruling dynasties here, but I am obliged to point out that one of its rulers in this era was the fabled Frederick II, who founded its university – the oldest state university in the world – in 1224.
Upon the Sicilian Vespers towards the end of that century, the Kingdom of Sicily was split in two and Napoli became the seat of what has become known as the Kingdom of Napoli, comprising everything we think of today as mainland Southern Italy. The Kingdom fell to the Spanish in the 15th century, and after a brief French occupation was integrated into the Spanish Empire in 1504. From then, Napoli was governed by viceroys, and they would steer the city to its greatest heights. By the next turn of the century, Napoli was the second-largest city in Europe. However, the Spanish Empire had started to overextend itself in its endless wars, and subsequent heavy taxation burdened the city to the point of a ten-month insurrection in 1647, and after a plague epidemic in 1656 killed half the population, the golden age was definitively over.
By this time, both the Spanish Empire and its ruling Habsburg branch were in severe decline, and the Kingdom was under Austrian control for two decades upon the subsequent War of the Spanish Succession. Spain reclaimed the Kingdom in 1734, but now installed a cadet branch of its new Bourbon rulers and gradually both kingdoms grew apart. Napoli would never control more territory than it did after the fall of Napoleon and the subsequent reunification with Sicily, but that was the first and only aspect in which this final pre-unification era represented a peak. Otherwise, the Bourbons generally mismanaged the kingdom and presided over stagnation and widespread poverty. By the time of annexation by the nascent Italian state in 1861, Napoli was still the most populous city in Italy, but deeply underdeveloped and impoverished compared to the cities to its north. Sanitation was poor even by 19th-century standards, and attempts to remedy this after unification were stifled even then by the camorra (the Neapolitan mafia). It’s fair to say that things haven’t changed much since then. Napoli remains the leading city in Southern Italy in all aspects, but when you’ve spent centuries as one of the world’s leading cities in terms of architecture and yet the most notable additions to the urban fabric in more recent times are illegal constructions and waste dumping sites, things can and should be so much better. Despite all this, its inextricable ties to the opera, the baroque and Diego Maradona, as well as its status as the birthplace of pizza, mean its cultural influence endures.
(picture by Valeria1582 at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Unless the improbable happens and the first KOM sees a big battle to get into the breakaway or anyone feels like pushing it there, a full bunch sprint.
The longest stage of the Giro. At 2600 metres of elevation gain, the sprinters will have to do a bit of work, but with a flat final third it shouldn’t deter them.
Map and profile
Start
The Giro continues its habit of only using stage hosts that date back to at least Antiquity (so far, only Tirana has bucked the trend) with a transfer west to Potenza. Potenza was founded by the Lucanians in the 7th century BC and soon became one of the more important centres in the region. Lucania (basically modern Basilicata, only extending a bit further in all directions) usually allied with Roma during the Samnite Wars of the 4th and early 3rd century BC, before making the ill-fated decision to ally with Pyrrhus in the famed Pyrrhic Wars – the first major engagement between Roma and the Greeks – which led to conquest in 272 BC. Even in Roman times, Lucania/Basilicata was an area of little significance. Consisting almost entirely of mountainous terrain, its poor soils, lack of natural resources and logistically-challenging topography have traditionally left the region a backwater. In spite of both this and an unfortunate habit of continually supporting the losing side in the civil wars of the 1st century BC, Potenza did become a city of sorts, growing to be the (then de facto) capital of the Lucanian interior.
The central function of Potenza was consolidated in the Middle Ages by the feudal and religious structures. In spite of this, it was traditionally one of the more impoverished cities within the Kingdom of Napoli, both due to the general lack of economic viability of Basilicata and because of repeated earthquakes. Perhaps for this reason, it was one of the first places in the kingdom to declare against the ruling Bourbon branch during the abortive French invasion of 1799 (this was likely a key reason why the French made it the capital of Basilicata upon annexation in 1806) and then again during the wars of Italian unification in 1860. Now I could end this introduction with the further misfortune of Potenza since then – the Allied bombing of 1943, the devastating earthquake in 1980 which ravaged both Basilicata and Campania, the persistent economic issues of the South which are at their worst in these areas – but I’ll go for a fun fact instead. To deal with the great elevation difference within the city, Potenza has in the past decades installed a public elevator network that is now reportedly the largest in Europe.
In the Giro, this will be Potenza’s eighteenth appearance, the last time having come three years ago when Koen Bouwman won the stage from the breakaway. And just to indicate how much the Giro hates north-to-south routes: for the eighteenth time, it is visited in the first half of the race.
The longest of said escalators (picture by Caterina Policaro at flickr)
Route
For the first time this Giro, we have a pretty tough start to the stage. The neutralisation is already uphill, and when the flag drops the riders still have the last 5 kilometres of the profile below to go to crest the Valico Monte Romito.
A twisty, but shallow descent takes the riders into the Platano valley. The way out of it is the same as in the 2023 stage to Lago Laceno, up the first KOM of the day: Valico di Monte Carruozzo. This is comfortably the hardest climb of the day, but the gradients are mostly unremarkable. It also features an intermediate sprint a quarter of the way up, in Monte Lucano.
A fairly easy descent brings the riders to the highway they will spend most of the next 55 kilometres on. The only deviation is into Lioni, for an intermediate sprint. The nameless climb in this section is 4.9k at 6.1%. The riders finally leave the highway in the Avellino urban area. Usually that means it’s time to head up Montevergine, but this time RCS have an even shallower climb in stall. There is a whole bunch of false flat (2% average) included in the official categorisation, the profile below shows only the final 6.9 kilometres of the climb.
With that, the day’s climbing is over, and most of the remainder of the stage is spent within the Neapolitan urban area. They could have kept the length much closer to 200 kilometres, but instead we have a number of detours. Places of note in this final stretch include Nola, Emperor Augustus’ deathbed, the ‘triangle of death’. where the mafia has produced Europe’s largest illegal waste dump causing severe contamination and increased prevalence of diseases such as cancer, and the bonification sprint in Brusciano.
Finish
The exact same route as in 2023, when Alessandro De Marchi and Simon Clarke were caught at the last second and Mads Pedersen won the first and (prior to this edition) only Giro stage of his career. Just enough corners to string things out a little bit, but never technical.
And this is where we talk about Napoli, again – it’s the fourth stage finish here in as many years. This is all the more remarkable because, after 41 appearances between the first-ever Giro in 1909 and 1969, there had only been four further visits in the 53 editions between then and the current run. But of course, there is far more to Neapolitan history than the Giro to say the least, starting with its original name from which that adjective is derived: Neapolis. As the name suggests, its foundation in the late 6th century BC was by the Greeks, and it soon rose to be the most important Greek colony on the Tyrrhenian Sea. The decision to ally with the Samnites in the Samnite Wars cost it its independence in 325 BC, but the Romans allowed it a great deal of autonomy for centuries and its Greek character endured well into the imperial period. By this time, it had already become the most important city in historically prosperous Campania following Capua’s ill-fated decision to ally with Carthage in the Second Punic War.
As elsewhere, the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire led to difficult times (although Napoli never relinquished its status as one of the leading cities in Italy), with the city notably being successfully besieged three times (twice by the Byzantines, once by the Ostrogoths) during the Byzantine conquest of Italy in the mid-6th century. The Byzantines held onto Napoli as the Lombards erased most of their gains in the early 7th century, but as the early Arab conquests threatened the empire’s survival for most of the rest of the century they were forced to grant many of their Italian possessions autonomy (Venice is the other notable example). Napoli was therefore made a duchy in 661 and soon became de facto independent. This independence lasted until 1137, when the duchy was forced to submit to the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Now I won’t bother you with all the subsequent ruling dynasties here, but I am obliged to point out that one of its rulers in this era was the fabled Frederick II, who founded its university – the oldest state university in the world – in 1224.
Upon the Sicilian Vespers towards the end of that century, the Kingdom of Sicily was split in two and Napoli became the seat of what has become known as the Kingdom of Napoli, comprising everything we think of today as mainland Southern Italy. The Kingdom fell to the Spanish in the 15th century, and after a brief French occupation was integrated into the Spanish Empire in 1504. From then, Napoli was governed by viceroys, and they would steer the city to its greatest heights. By the next turn of the century, Napoli was the second-largest city in Europe. However, the Spanish Empire had started to overextend itself in its endless wars, and subsequent heavy taxation burdened the city to the point of a ten-month insurrection in 1647, and after a plague epidemic in 1656 killed half the population, the golden age was definitively over.
By this time, both the Spanish Empire and its ruling Habsburg branch were in severe decline, and the Kingdom was under Austrian control for two decades upon the subsequent War of the Spanish Succession. Spain reclaimed the Kingdom in 1734, but now installed a cadet branch of its new Bourbon rulers and gradually both kingdoms grew apart. Napoli would never control more territory than it did after the fall of Napoleon and the subsequent reunification with Sicily, but that was the first and only aspect in which this final pre-unification era represented a peak. Otherwise, the Bourbons generally mismanaged the kingdom and presided over stagnation and widespread poverty. By the time of annexation by the nascent Italian state in 1861, Napoli was still the most populous city in Italy, but deeply underdeveloped and impoverished compared to the cities to its north. Sanitation was poor even by 19th-century standards, and attempts to remedy this after unification were stifled even then by the camorra (the Neapolitan mafia). It’s fair to say that things haven’t changed much since then. Napoli remains the leading city in Southern Italy in all aspects, but when you’ve spent centuries as one of the world’s leading cities in terms of architecture and yet the most notable additions to the urban fabric in more recent times are illegal constructions and waste dumping sites, things can and should be so much better. Despite all this, its inextricable ties to the opera, the baroque and Diego Maradona, as well as its status as the birthplace of pizza, mean its cultural influence endures.
(picture by Valeria1582 at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Unless the improbable happens and the first KOM sees a big battle to get into the breakaway or anyone feels like pushing it there, a full bunch sprint.
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