- Sep 20, 2017
- 13,639
- 25,622
- 28,180
We’ve had to wait very long, but at last, it’s time for a proper multi-mountain stage. While it isn’t the greatest route, it’s still up and down all day, making for one of only two five-star stages this edition.
Map and profile
Start
Another longer-than-average transfer has taken the riders into the Aosta Valley, where they will start from the regional capital that gives Italy’s smallest region its name. Aosta (Aoste in French, or Aoûta in the local Valdôtain tongue that remains the first language of about a sixth of the region’s population) is the kind of place that was pretty much destined to exist in this exact location, being situated at the junction of the roads to the Gran San Bernardo and Piccolo San Bernardo (Grand-Saint-Bernard and Petit-Saint-Bernard) passes. The town was founded by the local Salassi tribe, probably in the final centuries before the Common Era. The Salassi became Roman vassals in the mid-2nd century BC, but were allowed to retain their independence longer than almost any other. However, if ancient historians are to be believed, the annexation by the Roman Empire was horrific: when the region was conquered in 25 BC, the 40000 Salassi were supposedly collectively taken prisoner and sold into slavery. The town was then refounded as Augusta Praetoria Salassorum, and served as the capital of one of the small Alpine provinces but also as an economically (especially earlier) and militarily (especially later) strategic centre.
The centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire were as tumultuous as they were everywhere, with control of the region being administered intermittently from either side of the Alps. As a result, cultural influences were quite diverse, a theme that would help shape the Valdôtain history. Eventually, in the 11th century, the County of Savoy (Savoie) was established, and Aosta was a part of it almost from the start. Savoy would slowly shift eastward as it slowly morphed into the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, but in the Middle Ages, both the capital (first Montmélian, then Chambéry) and the majority of the territory were on what is now the French side of the Alps. This had a twofold effect on the Aosta Valley. On the one hand, its political and cultural links now lay mostly towards the other side of the Alps, which meant it would develop rather differently than the rest of modern Italy. On the other hand, its peripheral location relative to the rest of Savoy led to a great deal of autonomy being granted. In 1193, the reigning Count of Savoy signed a charter that allowed for self-government by a general council of the Three Estates. This council adopted French as the official language in the 16th century, showcasing just how un-Italian the region was at this time.
However, change was coming, and it would be of an imposed nature. In 1562, the House of Savoy moved its capital to Turin, and began to take on more and more of an Italian character. Especially after they gained the right to call themselves kings in 1713, the Savoy rulers started to centralise their authority more and more and respect the tradition of Valdôtain autonomy less and less. In 1730, Charles Emmanuel III became the first Savoy ruler to refuse the traditional swearing of allegiance to the charter of autonomy, and after his death in 1773, his heir Victor Amadeus III officially abolished the charter altogether. After the House of Savoy gave up their ancestral Savoyard lands in 1860 in exchange for French help during the wars of Italian unification, the Aosta Valley became a lonely French-speaking pocket in a unified, mostly Italian-speaking nation.
This situation was not to the liking of the Italian government, and the official status of French was slowly chipped away at during the next decades. Even so, on the eve of the March on Rome, eight out of nine inhabitants of the Aosta Valley was still Francophone. And then, the woodchip was replaced by a fascist chainsaw. The valley was administratively merged into the much larger province of Turin, migration from the rest of Italy to Aosta was encouraged, the use of French was – sometimes violently – suppressed, most place names were Italianised, and the leader of the now-underground autonomous movement was tortured to death in 1944. After the Second World War, the valley regained partial autonomy and the official status of French was restored, but the damage had been done, and today French is spoken almost exclusively as a second language.
And what about Aosta itself? Its history honestly isn’t that interesting. Its status as the capital – whether official or de facto – of the region never came into doubt, its military and trade significance was set in stone, and despite a number of short-lived French. At 30000 inhabitants, the town continues to function as the administrative, economic, cultural and touristic capital of the valley, and is especially notable for its well-preserved Roman remains. Although the Giro visits the valley with some regularity, Aosta itself has featured ‘only’ six times, most recently as a stage start in 2006.
(picture by Zairon at Wikimedia Commons)
The route
The start and finish are close enough to one another that they are connected by gondola, so basically RCS were free to pick whatever route between them they wanted to. In all honesty, they’ve done a mediocre job, but thankfully it was impossible to design a bad stage under these constraints (or lack thereof). The road starts to climb right out of the gate, ascending Saint-Barthélémy (now there’s a non-Italianised place name) from its easy side. The categorisation, and as a result also the official profile, is missing the first bit, but as I can’t find a profile of the exact side used here, I’m showing it anyway. The full climb is 1.3k at 5.2%, then 500 metres of shallow descent, then the profile below, for a total of 17.7k at 5.8%.
After a not especially interesting descent and the longest stretch of valley of the day (not quite 12 kilometres), the riders find themselves back in Aosta. Here, they turn north to head up the uncategorised climb into Roisan. The intermediate sprint comes 350 metres before they crest its summit.
A very brief descent then gives way to the easiest of the day’s five categorised climbs, Doues. The steepest kilometre is nothing to sneeze at, though.
The route then doubles back on itself, almost entering Aosta a third time. On the very edge of town, however, we turn right onto a tougher pair of climbs, Lin Noir and Verrogne. Although separated by 4.1k of downhill false flat, the two form a coherent enough whole in this particular configuration (there are a lot of variants) that RCS have let the two share a climb profile. These are more than decent climbs, I just wish they were a bit steeper. Or rather that RCS had picked a harder option – while there is no Mortirolo or Stelvio nearby, there are definitely more exciting climbs at hand, and the Giro della Valle d’Aosta usually does a better job at picking them out.
Finish
A moderately technical descent takes the peloton back down to the valley floor, where there are 9.4 kilometres of respite culminating in the bonus sprint. Then, it’s up to Pila. There are two traditional sides to this climb which meet two-thirds of the way up, and RCS have picked the easier option. Especially from this side, it feels like a Tour de France MTF – an average gradient just above 7%, very consistent ramps on a reasonably wide road, finishing at a purpose-built ski resort village.
Although somewhat in the shadow of more famous destinations like Cervinia or Courmayeur, Pila is one of the better-sized Valdôtain ski resorts, benefiting especially from its proximity to Aosta, to which it has been connected by gondola since 1957. It has hosted two previous Giro MTFs – the final mountain stage of the epic 1987 edition, won by Philippa York (known then as Robert Millar) while Stephen Roche all but secured the GC, and the final MTF of the not exactly epic 1992 edition, with Udo Bölts emerging victorious while race leader Miguel Induráin sucked the life out of the GC battle in his typical fashion. As a side note, both of those stages were longer than this one by over 100 kilometres.
(picture by Patafisik at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Pretty much every climber, riding for GC or not, will have been counting the days leading up to this stage. It will be an explosive start to the stage, but what happens after that is much more up in the air – this is the kind of MTF that could be a bit of a damp squib if the GC riders race negatively, sawtooth profile or no.
Map and profile
Start
Another longer-than-average transfer has taken the riders into the Aosta Valley, where they will start from the regional capital that gives Italy’s smallest region its name. Aosta (Aoste in French, or Aoûta in the local Valdôtain tongue that remains the first language of about a sixth of the region’s population) is the kind of place that was pretty much destined to exist in this exact location, being situated at the junction of the roads to the Gran San Bernardo and Piccolo San Bernardo (Grand-Saint-Bernard and Petit-Saint-Bernard) passes. The town was founded by the local Salassi tribe, probably in the final centuries before the Common Era. The Salassi became Roman vassals in the mid-2nd century BC, but were allowed to retain their independence longer than almost any other. However, if ancient historians are to be believed, the annexation by the Roman Empire was horrific: when the region was conquered in 25 BC, the 40000 Salassi were supposedly collectively taken prisoner and sold into slavery. The town was then refounded as Augusta Praetoria Salassorum, and served as the capital of one of the small Alpine provinces but also as an economically (especially earlier) and militarily (especially later) strategic centre.
The centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire were as tumultuous as they were everywhere, with control of the region being administered intermittently from either side of the Alps. As a result, cultural influences were quite diverse, a theme that would help shape the Valdôtain history. Eventually, in the 11th century, the County of Savoy (Savoie) was established, and Aosta was a part of it almost from the start. Savoy would slowly shift eastward as it slowly morphed into the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, but in the Middle Ages, both the capital (first Montmélian, then Chambéry) and the majority of the territory were on what is now the French side of the Alps. This had a twofold effect on the Aosta Valley. On the one hand, its political and cultural links now lay mostly towards the other side of the Alps, which meant it would develop rather differently than the rest of modern Italy. On the other hand, its peripheral location relative to the rest of Savoy led to a great deal of autonomy being granted. In 1193, the reigning Count of Savoy signed a charter that allowed for self-government by a general council of the Three Estates. This council adopted French as the official language in the 16th century, showcasing just how un-Italian the region was at this time.
However, change was coming, and it would be of an imposed nature. In 1562, the House of Savoy moved its capital to Turin, and began to take on more and more of an Italian character. Especially after they gained the right to call themselves kings in 1713, the Savoy rulers started to centralise their authority more and more and respect the tradition of Valdôtain autonomy less and less. In 1730, Charles Emmanuel III became the first Savoy ruler to refuse the traditional swearing of allegiance to the charter of autonomy, and after his death in 1773, his heir Victor Amadeus III officially abolished the charter altogether. After the House of Savoy gave up their ancestral Savoyard lands in 1860 in exchange for French help during the wars of Italian unification, the Aosta Valley became a lonely French-speaking pocket in a unified, mostly Italian-speaking nation.
This situation was not to the liking of the Italian government, and the official status of French was slowly chipped away at during the next decades. Even so, on the eve of the March on Rome, eight out of nine inhabitants of the Aosta Valley was still Francophone. And then, the woodchip was replaced by a fascist chainsaw. The valley was administratively merged into the much larger province of Turin, migration from the rest of Italy to Aosta was encouraged, the use of French was – sometimes violently – suppressed, most place names were Italianised, and the leader of the now-underground autonomous movement was tortured to death in 1944. After the Second World War, the valley regained partial autonomy and the official status of French was restored, but the damage had been done, and today French is spoken almost exclusively as a second language.
And what about Aosta itself? Its history honestly isn’t that interesting. Its status as the capital – whether official or de facto – of the region never came into doubt, its military and trade significance was set in stone, and despite a number of short-lived French. At 30000 inhabitants, the town continues to function as the administrative, economic, cultural and touristic capital of the valley, and is especially notable for its well-preserved Roman remains. Although the Giro visits the valley with some regularity, Aosta itself has featured ‘only’ six times, most recently as a stage start in 2006.
(picture by Zairon at Wikimedia Commons)
The route
The start and finish are close enough to one another that they are connected by gondola, so basically RCS were free to pick whatever route between them they wanted to. In all honesty, they’ve done a mediocre job, but thankfully it was impossible to design a bad stage under these constraints (or lack thereof). The road starts to climb right out of the gate, ascending Saint-Barthélémy (now there’s a non-Italianised place name) from its easy side. The categorisation, and as a result also the official profile, is missing the first bit, but as I can’t find a profile of the exact side used here, I’m showing it anyway. The full climb is 1.3k at 5.2%, then 500 metres of shallow descent, then the profile below, for a total of 17.7k at 5.8%.
After a not especially interesting descent and the longest stretch of valley of the day (not quite 12 kilometres), the riders find themselves back in Aosta. Here, they turn north to head up the uncategorised climb into Roisan. The intermediate sprint comes 350 metres before they crest its summit.
A very brief descent then gives way to the easiest of the day’s five categorised climbs, Doues. The steepest kilometre is nothing to sneeze at, though.
The route then doubles back on itself, almost entering Aosta a third time. On the very edge of town, however, we turn right onto a tougher pair of climbs, Lin Noir and Verrogne. Although separated by 4.1k of downhill false flat, the two form a coherent enough whole in this particular configuration (there are a lot of variants) that RCS have let the two share a climb profile. These are more than decent climbs, I just wish they were a bit steeper. Or rather that RCS had picked a harder option – while there is no Mortirolo or Stelvio nearby, there are definitely more exciting climbs at hand, and the Giro della Valle d’Aosta usually does a better job at picking them out.
Finish
A moderately technical descent takes the peloton back down to the valley floor, where there are 9.4 kilometres of respite culminating in the bonus sprint. Then, it’s up to Pila. There are two traditional sides to this climb which meet two-thirds of the way up, and RCS have picked the easier option. Especially from this side, it feels like a Tour de France MTF – an average gradient just above 7%, very consistent ramps on a reasonably wide road, finishing at a purpose-built ski resort village.
Although somewhat in the shadow of more famous destinations like Cervinia or Courmayeur, Pila is one of the better-sized Valdôtain ski resorts, benefiting especially from its proximity to Aosta, to which it has been connected by gondola since 1957. It has hosted two previous Giro MTFs – the final mountain stage of the epic 1987 edition, won by Philippa York (known then as Robert Millar) while Stephen Roche all but secured the GC, and the final MTF of the not exactly epic 1992 edition, with Udo Bölts emerging victorious while race leader Miguel Induráin sucked the life out of the GC battle in his typical fashion. As a side note, both of those stages were longer than this one by over 100 kilometres.
(picture by Patafisik at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Pretty much every climber, riding for GC or not, will have been counting the days leading up to this stage. It will be an explosive start to the stage, but what happens after that is much more up in the air – this is the kind of MTF that could be a bit of a damp squib if the GC riders race negatively, sawtooth profile or no.
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