Giro d'Italia Rate the 2024 Giro d'Italia Route

[Zoetemelk-fan]

+ Excellent first weekend
+ Good amount of TT
+ Livigno and Grappa stages both look fairly good (but could have been better)

- Far too many sprint opportunities, often in places near lots of good climbs too
- Joke of a sterrato stage
- Joke of a Dolomites block

It's a borderline 5 or 6 for me, but the sheer amount of designs that could have been so much more makes me go for the former option. Disappointing route.

Was about to write excact same cons and pros. Ended up with a '6'.

/off-topic
Luckily it's up to the riders of making the 2024 edition exciting anyway
E.g. some of the sprint stages could end up interesting, though I know cross winds are not that common in this month. But other interesting things can happen, just requiring courage and riders willing to hurt the peleton.
Don't have to be Remco or Ganna type of riders, just needs cooperation in a break, like we witnessed on two on paper "dull sprint stages" during Le Tour 2023 but both ending up quite fascinating, both times with the break to succeed.

 

[OlavEH]

Looking somewhat closer at the route, I have some more considerations:

- An early Oropa MTF is okay. And the same for the Prati di Tivo MTF.
- The Bocca di Selva MTF provides more or less nothing.
- The Mottolino stage is okay. Not because it's well designed, but the length and total amount of height meters could make it really good.
- It is pretty amazing to have two fairly big mountain stages in the Dolomites, but not being able to design something better than this.

The route mostly needs more hilly and medium mountain stages, but also a better design of mountain stages. Some minor changes would have made the route much better.

- Do a proper sterrato stage on stage 6 instead of that *** we're being served.
- Change Bocca di Selva for a bigger medium mountain stage. That could also have been stage 11 or 12.
- Make at least one big and proper designed Dolomite stage.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Stage 20 is bland design because all the climbing consists of two times up the same side of a climb that literally has 10 different sides, some of which are harder than the one being used. That being said, it's still a good design, just a very lazy one.

Sure, so go ahead and nitpick on every god damn stage then. You guys obviously know the Italian geography a lot more looking through your PC-screen on Google Maps. Thats just a shitty mindset.

Use your energy on the stages that are actually bad instead.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Sure, so go ahead and nitpick on every god damn stage then. You guys obviously know the Italian geography a lot more looking through your PC-screen on Google Maps. Thats just a shitty mindset.

Use your energy on the stages that are actually bad instead.

Did you miss the part where I called it a good design before you decided to go into meltdown for no reason?

 

[Rob5091]

Seems like EF wont be sending Carapaz to the Giro - too much TT-ing. But Ben Healy for GC?!

https://cyclinguptodate.com/cycling...vaughters-has-big-plans-for-2024-giro-ditalia

“There’s a lot of flat time trialing for a modern-day Grand Tour. Even compared to the Giro this year, which had the uphill TT at the end. I don’t have a problem with that but obviously if we were to consider racing Carapaz at the Giro, 68km of time trialing is a little tricky," analyses the boss of Healy's EF Education-EasyPost team, Jonathan Vaughters in conversation with GCN. "We’d have to see the specifics of the first time trial to understand the punchy bits and the technical bits."
“From my perspective it’s not what we were hoping for if we were considering sending Richard to the race. That wasn’t the route that I was looking for," Vaughters continues. "Now we’ll wait for the Tour de France route. Until that comes out, it’s impossible to say which rosters go where. 68km of time trials, you’re going to lose four to five minutes and while you can still do top ten, you can forget about winning. Maybe this is an opportunity for Ben Healy to try and ride GC.”

 

[Valv.Piti]

Did you miss the part where I called it a good design before you decided to go into meltdown for no reason?

Did you miss everybody criticizing everything and coming up with 100 alternatives? Its just tiring in the long run when something's actually good.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Did you miss everybody criticizing everything and coming up with 100 alternatives? Its just tiring in the long run when something's actually good.

Coming up with alternatives is a natural part of analysis. Criticising everything is a fiction on your part.

Speaking of fiction: Healy as a GC rider. That seems like the kind of idea that falls apart on Oropa already.

 

[red_flanders]

I'll give it a 6, it is fairly balanced in terms of TTing and not too backloaded. But the individual stages are just not doing it for me.

This is also as good as a time as any to mention that I will not be doing the stage analysis anymore. This is not related to the route itself, I already decided a while ago. I'm just not following cycling as much as I used to.
I'm saying that in advance so if anyone wants to do something similar they have plenty of time to plan it.

Not sure how I'm supposed to evaluate the route without your stage analysis!

 

[Pantani_lives]

Ganna can win this. If they cancel the Livigno and the Stelvio because of the bad weather, he can start the Grappa stage with a four minute lead on Kuss and Almeida. [Edited]

 

[Valv.Piti]

Coming up with alternatives is a natural part of analysis. Criticising everything is a fiction on your part.

Speaking of fiction: Healy as a GC rider. That seems like the kind of idea that falls apart on Oropa already.

Ofc it is, but stage 20 is great. Only thing you can point at is "but, but, the first ascent should be a different side of Grappa!" In reality that matters very, very little and is only cosmetics and aesthetics. This side is more than hard enough even going on the first ascent.

Stages 16-19 are utter horseshite and the gravel-stage is utter shite. It gets very old when the Livigno-stage and Grappa-stage is said to be not good/is too bland/is too easy or whatever. These stages are great, and are the good things in the Giro along with the Grande Partenza, pacing and time trials.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Ofc it is, but stage 20 is great. Only thing you can point at is "but, but, the first ascent should be a different side of Grappa!" In reality that matters very, very little difference and is only cosmetics and aesthetics.

If you really think the difference between the Semonzetto side and the Strada degli Alpini side is 'only cosmetics and aesthetics', then you need a new pair of glasses... by the numbers, it is more or less the difference between having Madeleine from the hardest side/Portet and a marginally shorter version of Mortirolo with a long, mostly easy section on top of it as your penultimate climb. No disrespect to Madeleine, Portet and Grappa from Semonzetto, which are all excellent climbs, but given the choice between them and a climb that I am pretty sure would be top-10 hardest ever seen in a GT...

 

[houtdffan]

Ganna can win this. If they cancel the Livigno and the Stelvio because of the bad weather, he can start the Grappa stage with a four minute lead on Kuss and Hart.

Ganna needs 40 minutes on the Grappa stage

 

[Froome]

Ganna needs 40 minutes on the Grappa stage

Remco needs 27 minutes on the grappa stage.

 

[Rob5091]

Remco needs 27 minutes on the grappa stage.

Why do you think he's going to the Tour?!

 

[Potomac]

I predict with such a disappointing collection of profiles, that it ends up being one of the most exciting editions.

 

[Rob5091]

I predict with such a disappointing collection of profiles, that it ends up being one of the most exciting editions.

As long as UAE, Jumbo & Bora send all their top guys to the Tour (as is expected), then the Giro could produce a few surprises.

 

[EddyMazzoleni]

Remco needs 27 minutes on the grappa stage.

Remco really lives rent free in a lot of people head

 

[Escarabajo]

I predict with such a disappointing collection of profiles, that it ends up being one of the most exciting editions.

I agree. Every time we get the awesome routes and we get such disappointing results.

 

[Froome]

Remco really lives rent free in a lot of people head

It was just a joke, i actually like his style of racing.

 

[Rob5091]

Grmay, Girmay & the others from the Horn of Africa should feel at home at the Giro apparently -
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...in-northern-italy-mirrors-climate-in-ethiopia
Extreme drought in northern Italy has doubled over the past two decades, creating a climate that increasingly mirrors that of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, research shows.

 

[ashhutch1997]

Yra

Grmay, Girmay & the others from the Horn of Africa should feel at home at the Giro apparently -
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...in-northern-italy-mirrors-climate-in-ethiopia
Extreme drought in northern Italy has doubled over the past two decades, creating a climate that increasingly mirrors that of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, research shows

Yeah definitely looked like a drought this year when it literally rained every day..

 

[Rob5091]

Yra

Yeah definitely looked like a drought this year when it literally rained every day..

So it was a "drought" of good weather ...

 

[ashhutch1997]

Just going back on this route, the TDF gravel stage really puts the sterrato stage in the Giro to shame. Rapolano Terme is placed near so many sterratto sectors that are used in Strada Bianchi, they could have designed an awesome stage, but instead we get 3 flat sectors coming far from the finish.
I hope maybe RCS change this route in reaction to the TDF stage, as we know they like to change stage routes last minute (usually for the worst, Genova 2022).
The fact this will probably end up being a bunch sprint is a disgrace given the opportunities in the area.

 

[Escarabajo]

The last minute changes are almost always to make it softer and not harder. That is the problem. We are stuck with this awful route!

 

[ashhutch1997]

The last minute changes are almost always to make it softer and not harder. That is the problem. We are stuck with this awful route!

Unfortunately I think your right. I'm not one to moan on here about routes too often, but this is probably the worst Giro route I've seen for a very, very long time. And what's frustrating is they could have made some of the stages so much better with small adjustments.