Giro d'Italia Giro d'Italia 2025: Stage-by-stage analysis

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Netserk

Netserk

Apr 30, 2011
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Non-grainy:

mg9F5OH.jpeg
 
Mayomaniac

Mayomaniac

Apr 10, 2019
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I can talk myself into liking some stuff (stage 17 being easier means that attacks on stage 16 are more realistic, stage 8 has a nice final and the whole stage 7 to stage 9 sequence is good) but as soon as I see stage 14 and stage 15 I'm like "kill it with fire!"
 
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Red Rick

Red Rick

Feb 20, 2012
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Devil's Elbow said:
And with that, my biggest-ever project is over. The Word file I’m working in sits just shy of 27000 words. I regret nothing. I hope you all enjoyed it too.
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I absolutely did. You nailed it. Thanks a lot.

Some nitpicky comments @Devil's Elbow

- You typo'd Rujano podiuming the Giro in 2025, this should be 2005
- The Castelraimondo stage profile got replaced by another Tagliacozzo finish map
 
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Gigs_98

Gigs_98

Feb 18, 2015
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Red Rick said:
If those 2 were great, it would still be ridiculously backloaded.

If anything I think the route has a lot of ingredients to make the race worse than than 2023.
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Make the Grappa stage good and add one mountain stage early in the race and I don't even care about the Bormio stage anymore. I think 4 proper mountain stages in the last week are clearly too many so I don't mind stage 17 not being a gc stage. I would prefer it to be a medium mountain stage or just not include Mortirolo east (honestly I'm mostly annoyed by people making a big deal of this stage because the most bang average alpine climb happens to be the descent of a legendary climb and therefore the two share one name), but I think a breakaway stage without a great opportunity for gc action can be a perfectly fine stage design.

So yeah, use Bocca di Forca and the 2017 Asiago finish, and maybe have a Pradaccio-Abetone finish and you already have a massive improvement. I still think that route would be in great danger of people softpedalling it but at least there is a chance for something interesting to happen from far out.
 
Red Rick

Red Rick

Feb 20, 2012
50,810
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Gigs_98 said:
Make the Grappa stage good and add one mountain stage early in the race and I don't even care about the Bormio stage anymore. I think 4 proper mountain stages in the last week are clearly too many so I don't mind stage 17 not being a gc stage. I would prefer it to be a medium mountain stage or just not include Mortirolo east (honestly I'm mostly annoyed by people making a big deal of this stage because the most bang average alpine climb happens to be the descent of a legendary climb and therefore the two share one name), but I think a breakaway stage without a great opportunity for gc action can be a perfectly fine stage design.

So yeah, use Bocca di Forca and the 2017 Asiago finish, and maybe have a Pradaccio-Abetone finish and you already have a massive improvement. I still think that route would be in great danger of people softpedalling it but at least there is a chance for something interesting to happen from far out.
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It really does the "don't do too many MTF in the 3rd week" without doing the thing you're supposed to do instead of the MTFs.

I think Tagliacozzo is also just disappointing for what it needs to do, the 400m flat at the very end piss me off disproportionately, etc.

But with the first 2 weeks you cannot change that much to make it better or put MTFs in if you wanna finish in the samep laces. Realistically you can do a 10 minute murito finish in Nova Gorica and put a Cat 1 at 15km to go on stage 8, but that requires approaching from the north.

The Giro just needs to put in more decent MTFs in the south and then leave them out in the Alps, but they never do it outside of Blockhaus.
 
O

OlavEH

Oct 19, 2011
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Gigs_98 said:
Make the Grappa stage good and add one mountain stage early in the race and I don't even care about the Bormio stage anymore. I think 4 proper mountain stages in the last week are clearly too many so I don't mind stage 17
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Then it would have been better to just skip the Grappa stage and re-design the Bormio stage to include Gavia.

Red Rick said:
The Giro just needs to put in more decent MTFs in the south and then leave them out in the Alps, but they never do it outside of Blockhaus
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That is correct, but I'm not sure if there are many alternatives. Terminillo and Vesuvio of a certain difficulty. Something in the Marche region (Catria, Petrano). Not much more than that I think.

The more annoying thing is that they use San Pellegrino in Alpe in a way that may be mostly useless.
 
Red Rick

Red Rick

Feb 20, 2012
50,810
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OlavEH said:
Then it would have been better to just skip the Grappa stage and re-design the Bormio stage to include Gavia.


That is correct, but I'm not sure if there are many alternatives. Terminillo and Vesuvio of a certain difficulty. Something in the Marche region (Catria, Petrano). Not much more than that I think.

The more annoying thing is that they use San Pellegrino in Alpe in a way that may be mostly useless.
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There are many climbs that are hard enough that can function as a MTF, or that are close enough to decently sized towns so they can finish not long after the descent.

But from what I understand RCS demand more $$ for a GC stage and most places further south can't or won't pay for it. Especially considering some pretty good climbs get used as MTFs in the Tirreno multiple times without being used in the Giro other than a climb in the middle of a breakaway stage like Sassotetto. Then finally, Blockhaus seems to be the only one regularly used in the Giro, but we don't see Tirreno staples like Chieti as finishes either, so I guess we can't have Maialetta + Guardiagrele either.
 
O

OlavEH

Oct 19, 2011
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Red Rick said:
There are many climbs that are hard enough that can function as a MTF, or that are close enough to decently sized towns so they can finish not long after the descent.

But from what I understand RCS demand more $$ for a GC stage and most places further south can't or won't pay for it. Especially considering some pretty good climbs get used as MTFs in the Tirreno multiple times without being used in the Giro other than a climb in the middle of a breakaway stage like Sassotetto. Then finally, Blockhaus seems to be the only one regularly used in the Giro, but we don't see Tirreno staples like Chieti as finishes either, so I guess we can't have Maialetta + Guardiagrele either.
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With the finish in Rome and both a sterrato stage and a stage including San Pellegrino in Alpe. And a Finestre-Sestriere stage, they should really have done what I think @railmix suggested once. A finish like this:

Stage 20: Sterrato stage
Stage 21: Rome finish

Here you could also add a stage 19 with San Pellegrino in Alpe - Abetone.

And Finestre - Sestriere should have been the last stage in the penultimate week, proably stage 15. That would have facilitated one of the best weeks in Giro history!
 
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Netserk

Netserk

Apr 30, 2011
45,258
27,717
28,180
Mayomaniac said:
I can talk myself into liking some stuff (stage 17 being easier means that attacks on stage 16 are more realistic, stage 8 has a nice final and the whole stage 7 to stage 9 sequence is good) but as soon as I see stage 14 and stage 15 I'm like "kill it with fire!"
Click to expand...
Best I can do about the penultimate weekend, somewhat taking the (self-imposed) constraints of RCS into account:

Stage 14: Treviso > Asiago
Stage 15: Fiume Veneto > Nova Gorica

The highest-impact minimalist changes I'd make though are double Sestriere and a longer second ITT (10-15 km extra would help a lot).
 
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