It may only be stage 7, but this MTF is the hardest climb of the race. Time for the GC battle to start (and end?) in earnest.
Map and profile
Start
Another transfer up the Tyrrhenian coast has taken the riders across the border with Lazio and into Formia, where this stage starts. It is located on the Gulf of Gaeta (Golfo di Gaeta), nowadays named after the nearby town that took centre stage in the Middle Ages but known in Roman times as the Sinus Formianus. Nothing is known of its history prior to 338 BC, when it was annexed by the Roman Republic. In 312 BC, the Via Appia was constructed, running directly through Formia. Combined with the mild climate, this made the Gulf of Gaeta in general and Formia in particular a favourite resort among rich Romans.
However, the most famous Roman who supposedly had a villa here is mainly connected to Formia for a different reason: Cicero, the great orator and one of the leading political figures during the fall of the Republic, was assassinated here in 43 BC. Born in 103 BC, Cicero rose to prominence courtesy above all else of his rhetorical skills and was elected to the consulship in 63 BC. His allotted year in office is mainly notable for the thwarting of the Catilinarian conspiracy (the significance of which is debated by some scholars), one of many attempts of the era to overthrow the Republic. Cicero was then invited by Caesar to join him, Pompey and Crassus in what history remembers as the First Triumvirate; he refused, and was briefly forced into exile in 58 BC before being recalled by Pompey. Cicero had at this point temporarily lost much of his clout, and spent the next few years supporting the triumvirs and partially walking back on his previous positions. Only after a successful governorship in 51-50 BC in Silicia (now southern Turkey) that was more or less forced upon him did he re-emerge as a political power in his own right.
By this time, Crassus had died (in 53 BC) and Caesar and Pompey had become bitter rivals, with the latter settling into an uneasy alliance with the dominant conservative wing of the Senate. Cicero arrived in Rome mere days before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and became a somewhat lukewarm supporter of Pompey’s cause. The civil war would last until 45 BC, but the back of the Pompeian side was broken at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC (Pompey himself was assassinated in the aftermath). After this battle, Cicero managed to extract a pardon from Caesar, and then kept a lower profile until the latter’s assassination (which Cicero supported, but was not involved with) in 44 BC.
Cicero now became the principal leader of the republican faction, in opposition to Mark Antony who had taken control of the Caesarean side. With war looming again, Cicero promoted Caesar’s young adoptive heir Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus) in a bid to diminish support for Antony. This backfired spectacularly: after both consuls were killed almost immediately in what would be a very brief war, Octavian gained sole command of what had been the republican army, started negotiations with Antony (who had been actively moving against him prior to the latest round of war), and marched on Rome to demand (and receive) the consulship. Octavian and Antony then formed the Second Triumvirate together with Lepidus and proscribed their enemies, including Cicero. Cicero fled south, but this time there would be no reprieve: he was intercepted at Formia and killed, less than two years after Caesar. The site is marked by his supposed tomb.
While the success of his political career is dubious, his legacy as a writer, orator and philosopher has loomed large throughout the nearly 21 centuries since his death. To illustrate the point: his
De Officiis was, to the best of our understanding, the third-ever book printed following the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Few, if any, can claim such a longstanding reputation.
…I was supposed to be talking about Formia, wasn’t I? Sadly, there isn’t that much to tell. As the Roman Empire crumbled, the surviving populace mostly relocated to the much more defensible peninsula on which Gaeta is situated, and for well over a millennium, all that survived where Formia had stood were two villages. Only in 1820 were these incorporated into a single town, to which the Latin name was restored in 1862. Although it would never again be as prestigious as it had been in Antiquity, Formia started to resume its function as a popular seaside resort.
The town was heavily damaged during the Second World War: after the Italian fascist regime collapsed in July 1943 as a result of the Allied invasion, the Nazis forcibly stepped in and drew up a new line of defense, the Gustav Line, southwest of Rome. Formia was located just northwest of this line, and was severely damaged during the six brutal months it took the Allies to break through. Formia recovered rapidly after the war, and at 37000 inhabitants, it is nowadays among the largest towns on the stretch of coast between the Roman and Neapolitan metropolitan areas. It has hosted the Giro just twice, in 1929 (when it was a part of Binda’s record-holding run of eight stage wins in a row) and 1974.
(picture by brunobarbato at Panoramio, reuploaded to Wikimedia Commons)
The route
This stage technically breaks UCI rules by exceeding the 240-kilometre limit. Given that, you would be forgiven for thinking that this has been allowed because the start and finish are very far apart. Instead, the first 51 kilometres (plus neutralisation) of this stage are spent on a lap that starts and ends in Formia, and only then do we actually start heading in the right direction. The only notable feature here is the false-flat drag on the Via Appia past Itri, part of which is in the neutralisation. Once the route actually heads inland, it broadly follows the Gustav Line, but swings around Montecassino (which saw the very worst of the fighting), instead heading briefly through Campania and then into Molise, the most obscure of all Italian regions. Here, we have an intermediate sprint in Venafro, where 400 people were killed when the Allies accidentally bombed it in 1944. The little hill before it is 2.6k at 4.8%.
After Venafro, the stage enters the Apennines in earnest, and it isn’t long until the road starts to climb properly. We are heading up to Rionero Sannitico, a historic ascent (already used in the first Giro) when using the old road, but unfortunately the highway is taken on this occasion. PCS has it as 9.5k at 5.0%, sadly I can’t find a profile anywhere. In classical Giro fashion, no KOM points on offer here, but for the 6.9k at 6.4% to Roccaraso (another staple of the race, this time from the traditional side), it’s the usual slight overcategorisation as a cat. 2.
By now, we have entered the Abruzzo region, and the next part of the stage is spent traversing its uppermost valleys. The roads here are anything but flat, and soon we reach the uncategorised Serra Malvone, short, but steeper than it looks on the stage profile.
After this summit, the route descends for a bit, then rises again towards the Passo San Leonardo. We are starting pretty high up, as such, it’s only the final 10.9k of the profile below.
Finish
A much longer, but still low-gradient descent takes the riders down to the Pescara valley. We are very much not heading to the eponymous coastal city, though, instead turning back southeast to tackle the queen of the Apennines, the Blockhaus. As every year, we aren’t going all the way to the summit, but 13.6k at 8.4% with the section from 10.0k to 0.6k at 9.4% is still extremely tough by any standard. The bonus sprint comes after 1.6k of climbing, but it probably isn’t advisable to expend energy there…
Blockhaus owes its German name to a small fort that was constructed at its summit by Austrian troops in the 1860s. It was introduced to the Giro in 1967, when Eddy Merckx announced his arrival as a GC rider by taking the first GT stage of his career. Blockhaus has been on the menu with some regularity since then (save for a long layoff between 1984 and 2009). Among the seven MTFs that the race has had here before today, the other really notable one is the 1972 sémitappe where José Manuel Fuente crushed everyone (including Merckx, who would strike back hard later in the race). The most recent outing was in 2022, when Jai Hindley won a rather disappointing stage that ended in a six-rider sprint.
View of the finish (by Ra Boe at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Given the stage length, a breakaway win cannot be ruled out, but the calibre of climber that will be allowed up the road will need a big gap to survive on this calibre of climb. As for the GC battle, something tells me that it won’t be a sprint of the favourites this time…
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram