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Rate the 2021 Giro d'Italia

Rate!

  • 10 (best)

    Votes: 1 0.8%
  • 9

    Votes: 4 3.0%
  • 8

    Votes: 17 12.8%
  • 7

    Votes: 42 31.6%
  • 6

    Votes: 30 22.6%
  • 5

    Votes: 18 13.5%
  • 4

    Votes: 13 9.8%
  • 3

    Votes: 6 4.5%
  • 2

    Votes: 2 1.5%
  • 1 (worst)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    133
6/10.

No real battle for the points or mountain jerseys. Nobody could do anything to Bernal until they were minutes down already. Landa crashed out early. No TV coverage of Giau. Weekend stages weren't really planned great.

Highlights were Montalcino, deluded Evenepoel fans, and Fortunato, Van der Hoorn and Bettiol's wins.


This year will end up as Vuelta > Giro > Tour as it does most of the time anyway.
 
A solid 7. Some great moments but just seemed to lack that extra something to make it worth a higher grade.

It also lacked a decent battle for the points and mountains jersey which didn’t help.
It was the worst points jersey battle I've evern seen tbh, with Sagan fighting to let breakaways go as soon as he had the jersey and no sprint being contested after like 12 days.
 
2 very good stages, one probably quite good as well, but we didn't see most of the good part, Yates making the most of the final climb on stage 19. And that's about it. Ok, Sestola was okay as well for stage 4 of a Giro.

So i guess, i'll be generous and it's enough for a 7 as i didn't really expect much when the parcours was announced and various other factors made it even less challenging.
 
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8/10 because I am Colombian! :D


It was really bad that Stage 16 was curtailed and worse that we didn't get many pictures from the curtailed stage. That stage would have made a big difference. Sterrato was really good, but having two stages to review in years to come would have been very special. Nowadays I don't replay many stages because Epic-ness has been lost. Especially by the ASO organization.
 
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I will most likely be the only one with >8/10 rate. I'm really happy with this one. The only real minuses i have are the TV coverage, some questionable sprint run-ins, Landa being Landa and once again TV COVERAGE. There were also a couple of stages that undeldelivered - mainly Bagno di Romagna, but that had an entertaining breakaway battle with Brambila and Benett beefing on and off the road. The biggest pluses are the amount of breakaway, maiden wins and Caruso. The ovr score would be lower if not Bernal's shaky 3rd week that provided quite a lot of tension to the GC race. The presence of Evenepoel and Almeida provided some behind the scenes and forum tension while MASNADA!1! provided some memes. I'll also argue that this time imo Skineos didn't really suffocate the race. The highlight for me are Caruso thanking Bilbao on Motta, Valter having first pink ever for Hungary, Taco Monday and FORTUNATO!1!!1. Honourable mentions go to Tobias Foss, Bernal's Giau ride if I'VE SEEN IT... Montalcino stage and 2nd half of stage 20 in general.

Now off to watch Dauphine and Suisse if Roland Garros allows it and stuff myself with a container of ethanol and happy pills as a prep for TdF and Slovenians strangling every possible lifeform outta those sterilized mountain stages and me in the process.

EDIT: BlueRoads put it nicely. A lot of helper shine this Giro and i'll always like when a helper/helpers will get their spotlight over their leaders.
 
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Being on the road for a few stages made it a very entertaining Giro for me, but objectively I don't think this deserves more than a 6. Montalcino was excellent, there was some very good breakaway action and Bernal honored the maglia rosa with some great attacks.

On the other hand, butchering the queen stage and not being able to broadcast it was unforgivable, so I can't give it a better vote.


Unsung heroes of the Giro in my opinion:

- Davide Formolo: probably the most cheerful rider of the peloton. Even when he lost like half on hour on Sega di Ala he would laugh and joke with the fans while pushing his monster gear.

- Michael Storer and Chris Hamilton: always smiling at the fans while climbing some hard mountains. They really enjoyed their time here.

- Koen Bouwman: has been towing Foss around for every freaking climb since the Giau. They were so inseparable that I though he would wait for Foss today and finish the ITT together.

- Vadim Pronskiy: incredible last week. He often climbed with the top riders.
 
Résumé:

This was the Giro that was shaped by the helper's stories.
Starting with the first time trial won by one of the most valuable helpers in the peloton. Continuing with the Evenepoel-Almeida soap story, ehm, saga. Then Caruso rose from domestique to podium contender, culminating in him getting runner-up, while Martínez showed his worth as Bernal's second hand and motivation coach. In the background Foss overtook his leader Bennett despite working for him in the beginning.
It also was the Giro of the riders you often don't recognize or don't rate highly, with stage wins from, among others, van der Hoorn, Dombrowski, Lafay, Mauro Schmid, Vendrame and Lorenzo Fortunato.
It was quite an Italian Giro, with seven Italian stage wins and a second place in GC for an Italian.
It was a Giro where the sprinters dropped out as if this race was a perforated vessel, very unromantic in that regard with Ewan getting the two stage wins he wanted, Merlier starting another race before the Giro finished and Sagan collecting the ciclamino in the most succinct, but apparently not totally unpassionate way.
It was a Giro of bad broadcasting, bad weather, backloading and Ineos dominance, so, nothing extra.ordinary, but there were some nice twists. Remember the little details, like the gravel finish, and a tunnel just before that gravel finish, or the traffic jam in the time trial today.
There was sterrato. 143 riders finished this race.
All in all it was a decent Giro which I'm rating 6.
 
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I gave it a 5. Just the embodiment of the word meh. There were some high points while very few stages were actually worse than anticipated (even the dolomites stage delivered exactly the kind of carnage on the Giau we were hoping for although we of course couldn't see it) but it was simply missing a certain spark.

The gc field was really lacking with Bernal being the only pre race favorite who could deliver. Yates only got strong way too late and really never got that strong anyway, Remco was exciting for 10 days but disappeared when the world needed him most, Landa, who together with Caruso really could have made an impact in this giro, crashed out and Almeida who positively surprised me in the last week was way too far back to pose any danger. The sad thing is that when Bernal showed weaknesses and opened the door for others to make a comeback there was just nobody there capable of capitalizing. It wasn't the kind of gt performance you used to see from Froome, or Nibali in 2013 and 2014 where there was this untouchable figure in front where at some point you gave up on seeing a fight for the win anyway. Bernal needed two weeks to establish that kind of aura around him just to lose it literally the next stage. That made it almost frustrating to watch. It was like Bernal was begging to be challenged but nobody showed up.

The stages themselves were all decent but we were clearly missing an outstanding stage. Caruso's win was cool and all but it only really delivered in the same way the Angliru delivered in 2017. We got our feelgood story but that wasn't really what we came for. The sterrato stage was also good, actually a lot better than I feared, but nothing more than that. It was entertaining for about two hours, there was always something happening and in the end we even got a proper gc battle. Did I enjoy it? Sure. Did anything iconic happen that will still be worth talking about in 5 years? Not really. And I feel like that's really what describes most of this giro. As I said, just meh.
 
2019 queen stage was curtailed as well. I really get deflated when that happens. It is happening too often.

I have a weird way of rating the Gt's. It is usually by the replays that I do on certain stages because they are epic. Something like Giro 2016. Even if the initial week was not so great. Tour 2011 as well. Giro 2018.
 
8/10


The top 3 is a fair representation of their quality over three weeks. Bernal was the strongest, although he did show signs of weakness after the second rest day, probably caused by his lower back. He was the strongest individual with the strongest team, with Martínez, Castroviejo and Ganna doing some heavy lifting.

Caruso got rid of his invisibility reputation and probably had the best days of his career. Yates proved to be much more experienced than three years ago, but he'll never be among the best over 2000 m. It's good to see the top riders look human.

There were some terrific stage wins as well: Martin, Ganna, Campenaerts, Van der Hoorn, Fortunato, Merlier...

A negative point was the shortening of Monday's stage, but in the end I don't think it made a lot of difference. The course was good, with something for everybody. It's a pity that Ciccone and Landa fell out, but I'm sure we'll see them back. It was also the Giro of the Evenepoel saga, but that has been discussed extensively. I think he has the mental strength to bounce back later this season.

All in all this was very enjoyable Giro. Somehow the third week of the Giro always gets exciting.
 
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