Also, today marked the beginning of one of my favourite races, the Giro delle Valle d'Aosta, a major U23 proving ground in a small corner of Italy full of beautiful scenery and glorious climbs. The Valle d'Aosta is a pretty small area and a lot of the climbs are dead ends, so the race has often padded itself out with stages in Piemonte, or across the border in Switzerland and France. This year it's gone a bit too far, with only 2 of the 5 stages actually in the Valle d'Aosta. This has meant that a wide range of amazing Valdôtain climbs are unused - no Tze Core, no Champremier, no Pila, no Saint-Barthélemy, no San Carlo, no Grand-Saint-Bernard.
However, it's also even more climber-biased than usual, believe it or not, with not one but TWO uphill time trials, and every stage finishing uphill as per Javier Guillén's fantasies.
Today's prologue was from Arvier into Valgrisenche, although it only ascended 5,1km of the climb. Tomorrow's first road stage runs from Valtournenche town down into Châtillon into the main Valle d'Aosta where the riders will have a flat loop around before climbing Saint-Pantaléon and then past Valtournenche again up to the resort of Breuil-Cervinia.
Again, I weep for the lack of Tze Core. The next stage more than makes up for it by being a loop around the Valais which is beautifully designed with a comparatively easy MTF (9km @ 7%, approximately) at Les Marécottes coming right off the back of two immensely tough Swiss climbs that I've been begging for the use of for some time - the brutal
Col du Lein, the last km of which is on sterrato, followed by the
mid-length and steep Col des Planches. These two back directly onto each other, in a short stage where the third climb from home - the toughest of the three, each getting progressively easier - crests 42km out.
The race then relocates to France for an intermediate stage which is mostly undulating with a couple of climbs, most notably the Col du Ranfolly, before a short (4km or so) ascent to the line at Morillon-Les Esserts.
The final stage is another short MTT, from Morillon village to the top of the Les Esserts resort over 5,4km.
Teams are of only 5 making the race hard to control and adding to the fun. All of the big Italian U23 teams (Colpack, Trevigiani, Zalf etc.) are there, plus development teams for a range of World Tour teams (Astana Continental, Lotto-Belisol U23, BMC Development, EFC-Omega Pharma) and a few Continental squads (Gourmetfein, 4-72 Colombia, Stölting).
Prologue: Arvier - Valgrisenche (ITT) 5,1km:
1 Diego Ochoa (4-72 Colombia) COL 8'59
2 Taylor Eisenhart (BMC Development Team) USA +1"
3 Davide Martinelli (Team Colpack) ITA +5"
4 Oskar Svendsen (Norway) NOR +6"
5 Aleksandr Foliforov (Russia) RUS +7"
6 Ildar Arslanov (Russia) RUS +8"
7 Felix Großschartner (Team Gourmetfein-Simplon Wels) AUT +9"
8 Bernardo Suaza (4-72 Colombia) COL +17"
9 Juan Felipe Osorio (4-72 Colombia) COL +19"
10 João Marcelo Gaspar (Centre Mondiale de Cyclisme) BRA +25"
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