I'm surprised by all the people saying Lance. They must think it's still 2004 or something.
Lance has been overweight in his upper body with muscle, hasn't gotten much racing in, broke his collarbone, is 37, took over three years off, has never even raced the Giro before, or raced in any of their big climbs, and has said he's focusing in winning the Tour (whether AC is in the way or not, JB will support Lance). And if we look back, he hasn't really attacked on a mountain stage in probably five years. We also haven't seen him race up anything big in four years, and nothing as steep as some of the Giro climbs in aeons. I expect him to do all he can to help win the TTT so he can get the Maglia Rosa, and then either finish way back, riding some support for Levi - if Levi can contend, or Lance will drop after Stage 15 or 16 and head to France to study the Tour course.
I don't know about Levi either. In the past he didn't seem to favor the steep climbs like the Giro has, with exception to last year's Angliru in the Vuelta and the Brasstown Bald, which is fairly short and didn't have Euro competition. He tends to like long grinders like you see in the Tour. I also haven't heard a peep that he's focusing on the Giro to win. Not one thing. All I heard after the ToC is that he was happy and would now support Lance going for his 8th Tour win. That was a huge disappointment to me, to hear him have such low expectations or lack of confidence. But where has he said he's going for a Giro win? Or even been focusing on winning it?
As to the TT lengths, they are actually still only about half of what the Tour was using as far as distance goes if you look back to the days of Indurain's wins. I believe 1994 had over 200km of TT. Double this year's Giro.
I think MellowVelo is spot on regarding the route. People thinking there isn't much climbing because the Selvio and Motirolo aren't here are going to be in for a surprise.
Stage 12's ITT is reported to be very technical. Lots of short up/downs and bends. Cunego said he might ride a standard road bike on it, to show you how technical it is. This is the kind of TT The Chicken would lose a half-hour on. I think we'll see some surprises when it's over.
Stage 17 should completely obliterate the field. At only 83km, with half of that one giant climb up the monstrous Blockhaus. There will be constant attacks with small groups of riders clustering together 20" or so off of each other, with repeated hard attacks in the last 5km. This is the kind of racing Lance hasn't done well in, in probably 8-9 years.
What I mean by that is Lance's last several Tour wins were him safely following a Postal/Disco team all the way up the final climb to the last 5km or so where they'd launch him. He hasn't attacked or had to chase on his own on any big climbs in years and years.
Though he looked good in Trentino, I question Basso still over three weeks with his long layoff, but I do think he will seriously contend. Basso says he'll work with Lance, and Levi by proxy. I think because Basso likes the "Postal Train" style of racing. But Cunego, Simoni and DiLuca know this, and say they'll work with each other attack over and over and over in order to disrupt this, even if it causes them to blow up. This right here might make for some interesting racing, and someone like Menchov or Sastre could come through unscathed - two riders I expect to do quite well anyway.
And to be completely frank (jaded perhaps) if we see Astana blast everyone away I'm going to be highly suspicious of them running on some sort of Ferrari fuel. Sorry.