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

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Mayomaniac

Mayomaniac

Apr 10, 2019
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Netserk said:
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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Bocca di Forca-Grappa before Asiago on stage 15 and on stage 14 you could do something that already worked well in the Tour of Slovenia in 2021 (at least the final part of the stage):
tour-of-slovenia-2021-stage-4-profile-0e0eb342fb.jpg
 
EddyMazzoleni

EddyMazzoleni

Apr 26, 2023
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Netserk said:
I think a finish in Nova Gorica and a circuit with Goriza are mandatory. So I think just adding Ravnica to the current circuit is the best you can do if you keep the stage order.
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Something along the line of the 2022 Torino stage would have been great on stage 15. I think RCS wants to take the Giro closer to the public and thus favours city circuit, which is reasonable but should not come at the cost of good racing
 
Gigs_98

Gigs_98

Feb 18, 2015
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Red Rick said:
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.
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Yeah it feels like they got genuinely self aware that having a bunch of monster stages in the third week but nothing beforehand is bad, but they didn't understand how to fix it.

Another thing I was thinking is that maybe they wanted to Pogacar-proof the route. If someone wants to win the race by ten minutes on this route at least they will have to create a show to do so. Of course when no Pogacar or Vingegaard are actually entering the race you just end up with a bad route.
 
Red Rick

Red Rick

Feb 20, 2012
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Gigs_98 said:
Yeah it feels like they got genuinely self aware that having a bunch of monster stages in the third week but nothing beforehand is bad, but they didn't understand how to fix it.

Another thing I was thinking is that maybe they wanted to Pogacar-proof the route. If someone wants to win the race by ten minutes on this route at least they will have to create a show to do so. Of course when no Pogacar or Vingegaard are actually entering the race you just end up with a bad route.
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The Giro has been very backloaded for a long time. I don't believe Pogacar or Vingegaard had anything to do with it.

If you want me to go full tinfoil hat it's more likely to me they wanted Roglic vs Evenepoel while making the route extremely favorable for the latter.
 
Gigs_98

Gigs_98

Feb 18, 2015
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Red Rick said:
The Giro has been very backloaded for a long time. I don't believe Pogacar or Vingegaard had anything to do with it.

If you want me to go full tinfoil hat it's more likely to me they wanted Roglic vs Evenepoel while making the route extremely favorable for the latter.
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It's been backloaded for a long time but with a much higher quantity of clear gc stages. I mean last year had more cat.1 mtf's in the first ten stages than this year in all 21 stages.
 
Devil's Elbow

Devil's Elbow

Sep 20, 2017
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Red Rick said:
Yes and no.

I also blame people for not realizing the threshold for a likely sprint stage changes when the most likely top sprinter at a race is a decent climber himself. And for using "not a lot of flat stages" as a hugely important metric for overall route assessment.
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We only knew part of the sprint field at the time of the route announcement.

Also, a lack of boring sprint stages (grande partenza aside) was one of the things that made the much-beloved 2018 Giro so good, partially because it meant most stages were at least decent and partially because it meant everyone was on their knees in the final week.

Finally, I don't think it's fair to penalise RCS in the route assessment for getting an unfavourable sprint field.
 
Red Rick

Red Rick

Feb 20, 2012
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Devil's Elbow said:
We only knew part of the sprint field at the time of the route announcement.

Also, a lack of boring sprint stages (grande partenza aside) was one of the things that made the much-beloved 2018 Giro so good, partially because it meant most stages were at least decent and partially because it meant everyone was on their knees in the final week.

Finally, I don't think it's fair to penalise RCS in the route assessment for getting an unfavourable sprint field.
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The Giro that had 3 MTFs, 2 puncheur finishes and a TT in the first 9 stages? That one?

That race had like 1 big breakaway stage in the first 10 stages, and it was stage 10 with an uphill start and rolling climbs all day for 240km. And much of the difficulty that Giro was made by the consistently bad weather.


If anything should be clear by now it's that the first 3 days of racing tend to be lean much more to sprints than the middle of the second week.
 
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