Rate the Giro 2018 route

[Gerrard Slipped haha]

What do ya all think? All the stage profiles can be found here http://www.cicloweb.it/2017/11/29/anteprima-altimetrie-giro-2018/

 

[veji11]

Gave it a 4 (well I can't seem to make the vote stick but hey). Very disappointing, MTF fest, little endurance, few stages could be fun (Castaglirone, Osimo... Sappada) but otherwise it is bound to be a borefest of high speed SKY train rocket up another, and another, and another (8 times!) MTF...

 

[Breh]

I want to give it a 0 purely for the start in Israel

Besides that, I kinda like it. Not too many sprint stages, not enough high mountains, interesting hilly stages,...

 

[Markolan]

7, better than last year. I like it, especially the stages 5-9-14-15 and 19.

 

[Red Rick]

Pure, undiluded garbage

 

[yaco]

It's a better route than 2017 - 2018 seems to have more interesting transitional stages which could affect GC, which was lacking in 2017.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Rated it a 4. Shoot me, but I'd have liked an additional sprint stage instead of, say, stage 4 or 5, since the Giro never has a good field for the hilly stages anyway and the sprints are likely to suffer with so little chances (2, 3, 7, 21 are certain, 13 likely, 12 and 17 are 50-50 given its the third week when 17 comes round, 10 is probably breakaway material but is a chance nonetheless). The 2016 Vuelta had five likely to certain sprints as well (2, 5, 16, 18, 21) with 7 and 13 as a possible sixth and seventh sprint and look at who managed sprint wins there...
As far as the mountains are concerned, with the weakest back-to-back-MTF weekend ever and hardly any opportunities to attack before the final climb, it doesn't exactly merit good marks either. The TTs are at least balanced given the mountain stages but should be longer too on a proper route. It's basically the 2017 Tour all over again, only without the sprint overkill - but the Giro has far better terrain than the Tour, so this might actually be a worse design. A 4 is generous, if anything.

 

[Valv.Piti]

First impression is a 5. I think I like it better than this year's route, at least I like the hard mountain stages more (Zoncolan, Sappada, Bardonecchia and Cervinia). All are well designed and rather long.The lack of time trial kilometres is not toooo bad in my opinion. Could be a lot worse and I think they have dont a very good job with Sicily, I quite like the stages there and that ascent of Etna looks harder altho I won't get my hopes too much up for that stage. I dislike Montevergina and aint no fan of Prato Nevoso. Campo Imperatore is fine because its so long.

I look forward to it.

 

[Oliver]

At first sight, disappointing.

 

[Pantani_lives]

I love it! I gave it a 9. It gives a lot of chances for attacks, it has a lot of great climbs. Stage 19 can give big time gaps. As always it's up to the riders to make something of it, but it has great potential.

Note: To make the poll work you have to delete one option, then put it back in.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Re:

I love it! I gave it a 9. It gives a lot of chances for attacks, it has a lot of great climbs. Stage 19 can give big time gaps. As always it's up to the riders to make something of it, but it has great potential.

Note: To make the poll work you have to delete one option, then put t back in.

Thats certainly a high grade!

Where is Libertine at?

 

[rune1107]

7 for me. Too many uphill finishes, but I do like the big MTT stages. Would have liked some more TT k's, but that's modern cycling I guess.

 

[Max Rockatansky]

I am missing the "Bring back Zomegan" option in the poll.

 

[May0maniac]

Probably a 7 for me, I like a few stages, but the MTF overkill in the first week is a bit of a problem.
Overall good, but not great.

 

[Gerrard Slipped haha]

As usual I am the high man on the route but then again, I almost always am positive, well unless you are TDF 15' or 17'. I am probably going 7 rn, it certainly doesn't give the "holy *** this is insane" feeling like maybe in 2010 or 11, but I really do think it has a potential to make Giro 18 a hell of a race.

Aside of the usual borefest that Montevergine is for sure going to be, the rest of week one looks pretty good. Hopefully this time something interesting happens on Etna, Imperatore and stage 4 and 5 could bring some small gaps as well. I wish there was more to be excited about in week two, but the weekend stages definitely make for the rest. First Zoncolan which NEVER fails to deliver a spectacle, and then the Sappada stage which looks waaay better than I imagined a day later. That is a sleeper Stage of the race contender right there, everyone will be tired after Zoncolan, this could bring huge gaps, a lot of potential there.

Kinda wish the ITT was either rolling or 10kms longer, but those are nitpicks, I guess it is fine. Nevoso stage looks pretty meh honestly, doubt anything serious will happen there. But then the Bardonecchia stage is awesome, but my god is 70km from the top of Finestre a *** lot. of distance. But still, this looks excellent, and so does Cervinia stage, which again, like Sappada, if you hear Cervinia you don't see this being very good, but on paper this stage looks nice, certainly an improvement over last year's Asiago finish.

Overall, 7 sounds fair to me. Always excited for Giro, it always delivers, and this one definitely has a potential to be great. Froome being in definitely brings in a lot of intrique, I am positive tbh, imo this is a win-win for a lot of people involved. And well, of course Movistar w/Landa as a leader will want to make Froome as exhausted as it is possible before Tour, so that sounds interesting.

Also as a Pole, hoping Majka rides the Giro, this looks like a route that could fit him pretty well

E: is it just me or did I *** up the poll? It shows that no votes have been given yet, could any admin fix this?

 

[Gerrard Slipped haha]

Also is it just me or did I *** up the poll? It shows that no votes have been given yet, could any admin fix this?

 

[Netserk]

I don't mind the easy MTFs, in fact I prefer them over harder ones (or steep HTFs) in one climb stages in the first week. I would like more tricky stages, a dolomite monster, meaningful descents, and then some more ITT to balance it.

 

[LeChuck]

Froome/10
I'm so hyped !
A dominant froome could make this the most boring race ever though.
Not enough tricky stages. Finestre is always nice.

 

[jsem94]

Some amazing stages, but also a few lifeless ones where there was real potential. My first thought is a 5.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

1: a difficult, undulating ITT to start the race! Long enough to open up some gaps but not long enough to eliminate anybody big-time, not a TTT (the opening ITT has been being phased out, disappointingly, in recent years). The scenery should be great. The politics are the only downside to this, but they are a significant down-side. Leaving them aside and judging purely on cycling perspectives though, this is great.
2: oh yea, another flaw for stage 1: it happens on a Friday. Because just like every year in the Giro, we get to have two garbage stages on the first weekend, because God forbid we miss an all-action sprint stage.
3: stop me, oh, oh oh, stop me, stop me if you think that you've heard this one before...
4: after a rest day, because of course the péloton is EXHAUSTED after two pan flat POS stages and a prologue, we're in Sicily. This could be interesting, in that it's a sustained but low gradient final ramp. I suspect something like the Agrigento stage in 2008 is what to expect but it's a little bit tougher than that.
5: the scale makes this look like a much more interesting stage than it actually is. Most of the climbing is at 3-4%.
6: a long, grinding climb to make that first contenders-from-the-pretenders stage. Can't fault this too much, Unipuerto is OK when you're in the middle of week 1 and the final climb is 30km long.
7: the first of about 4 attempts to clone the Pozzato stage from the 2010 race I think. That climb is 4km at 3,5%.
8: Montevergine from the usual side is a bit, well, pointless when you've already HAD your opening salvos MTF, since that's the only context in which Montevergine really works. Bart de Clercq to come back?
9: the third mountain stage, the third mountain stage where the final climb is a grinder, and the only climb that will be decisive. Not sure about this development. Getting a bit samey and uninspiring. I also assume this is this year's annual Pantani veneration as if he's the only great Italian champion they ever had. He now gets more honour bestowed upon him by the race than Coppi and Bartali combined. I'm bored now.
10: Very bizarre stage. Could potentially be interesting. Probably won't.
11: Tirreno-Adriatico type finish. Should be a nice last few minutes, but that's all.
12: Infinitely worse than the 2015 stage, one more lap might have made it better but it's basically another 2010 Pozzato hope I think.
13: Likewise, another tribute to an old Worlds course in an otherwise flat stage. Kudos to them for not playing lazy with the Po valley though, and they have actually tried to keep these stages interesting. They will probably go to sprints but they've at least tried to incentivize stagehunters to give it a go and the sprinters will be made to work for their chance to contest the win. I will definitely not criticise them too heavily for that.
14: Fairly typical Zonc stage - no problems here, after all it doesn't really matter what you put before the Zoncolan, unless they go for broke on Crostis it will be an all-for-the-final-climb stage, but this is the fourth mountain stage and the fourth where only the final climb will matter. At least this time Mick freaking Rogers won't win. I'm more interested in what the Giro Rosa does with the climb to be honest, now they've announced it.
15: I quite like this, a nice final 40km. Would have liked it more if they went over the summit and finished at Forni Avoltri of course - but I haven't got round to putting that stage in the Nordic Series in the Race Design Thread yet. Best stage so far, and also it's not so tough that it will scare people earlier, not that that ought to matter too much on the Zoncolan. A shame that this is the biggest Dolomite stage, i.e. most of the big Dolomite mountains are missing, but it's a decent stage in its own right.
16: If you're only going to have one decent length ITT it must be at least close to 50k. Not enough. At least it's mostly pretty flat to counterbalance the undulations in the Jerusalem TT.
17: lol at the GPM. Nothing more to say about this.
18: Unipuerto to Prato Nevoso? Christ. That's a fifth stage where nothing will happen prior to the final mountain. And Prato Nevoso really isn't all that difficult to open up gaps on its own, especially when riders are going to be wary of exhausting themselves for the two stages to come. Is this part of some game, to honour ill-gotten victories by the most unlikable Australians in the sport?
19: This I'm going to be interested to see. We've got used to the drill with Finestre, but having it 70km from the finish will be interesting because unlike Sestriere from the east, Jafferau is a tough enough climb in its own right to merit respect and not drilling it from the Finestre; at the same time, Finestre is so hard that it will likely shred the bunch anyway; while Jafferau is steep it's only about 7km long, so if there are decent timegaps, it becomes a concern whether there's enough time to be had on that one climb. The issue is that Sestriere comes in the middle and isn't so tough, so that may dissuade people from attacking. But the method to the madness from earlier comes into it too as the Finestre is the Cima Coppi which people will fight for. I only wish they included Moncenisio first.
20: Col Tze Core in the Giro. At last. Off of a cold open, I wish they'd use the other side of Saint-Panthaléon and give us something akin to the Torgnon stage from the Giro della Valle d'Aosta a few years ago, but that would make the loop longer if Cervinia is where the finish has to be. Cervinia itself isn't an especially interesting climb, but Tze Core has that steep second half that could catch people unawares and, given that it's the last GC-relevant stage, the riders may need to generate time on this stage in which case waiting until Cervinia is not a winning strategy.
21: not even a short ITT epilogue like 2009? For shame.

Overall, this is a vast improvement on last year's epic disappointment of a Giro route. There are some trends I'm concerned about - a large number of mountain stages that are flat for the first half, and a large number that are arranged in such a way that only the final climb can be decisive or straight up Unipuerto. There's not one significant stage that ends on a descent, and the first weekend is two flat stages yet again, a complete waste of your, mine and everybody's time. The ITT mileage is far too little - if they'd had the initial TT in Jerusalem, cloned the 2009 TT in Rome and then made the stage 16 test 15-20km longer I'd have been happy with that. There are nice climbs being brought out of mothballs, most notably Tze Core of course, and they've done their best to keep most of the flat stages interesting by dangling carrots to stagehunters. At the same time, there's not one single mountain stage that has true 'wow' factor and is the obvious, unquestioned queen stage, which I assume is what the Bardonecchia stage is meant to be; it doesn't have the same level of instant anticipation as Rifugio Gardeccia '11, Cortina d'Ampezzo '12 or Bormio '17. And it's now seven straight Giri without the Fedaia, which is ridiculous. Montevergine is more than a bit superfluous with being flanked by the Etna and Gran Sasso stages, and the politics around the Jerusalem start will not stop being controversial at any time soon. And the last stage is an unmitigated disaster if this becomes a 'thing' the way the rather uninspiring Madrid circuit has in the aim at mimicking the Champs Elysées finish in the Tour. But the biggest plus is, after last year's idiocy with things like Oropa, there's not one gimmicky super short mountain stage where they expect the racing to automatically be good because the stage is short, because it turns out if you design it badly, it won't be good, and a well designed normal length mountain stage has just as much chance of producing good action as a well designed short mountain stage.

 

[May0maniac]

The thing with stage 3 is that it goes through the Negev, so wind could be a factor and the heat should make things rather unpleasant for the riders, it could be better than your typical flat stage.

 

[Eshnar]

Re:

Also is it just me or did I **** up the poll? It shows that no votes have been given yet, could any admin fix this?

done.
6/10 for me. More like a 5.5...

 

[Red Rick]

I can't believe people are excited about this route. There's literally only 2 well designed stages in there. 5/7 (no perfect score) MTF stages are just gonna be hurrrr durrrr MTF and 4 of those 5 are grinders. Then there's Sappada, 1 good med mountain stage, and Finestre which is a good stage but if Sky want they'll burn it to the ground. Cervinia stage is ok I guess.

I doubt Froome ever has to come out of a teammates wheel to win this thing

 

[Tonton]

I give it a 8, but that's just because I like to troll on Netserk ...and that's what I rated the '17 route, for the same reason: trolling on Netserk . Both are about equal routes,worth a 6 to be honest.

Three days worth nothing but fill the coffers...welcome to the Tour d'Italie, I suppose...

Etna did nothing this year, why would anything happen next year? The week-end showdown at the Blockhaus was cool back in May, its replacement (combination of stage 8-9) is lame. So we finish week one with ten guys less than a minute from the pink jersey. What organizers want.

Then borefest until the 14th stage: by then the Giro is 2/3 of the way and the same ten guys are less than one minute from the same guy wearing pink. Yawn. On a good note, that's what organizers want. Then beautiful stage 14...yummy! And stage 15 good enough for a move to recoup some lost time the day before...seconds, but still. Interesting week-end.

ITT (way too short) after a rest day. Vegni, do you hate Tibopino (unlikely to come) that much ? Come on man...then I like the 18-19-20 stretch, although Finestre should be much closer to the finish. It may be a waste, like le Plateau des Glieres at Le Tour...way too far to give its full effect. But a Jafferau finish is nice, very nice.

Some very good stages, some good stretches, not bad, maybe good, but not great...

 

[hazaran]

Etna did nothing this year, why would anything happen next year? The week-end showdown at the Blockhaus was cool back in May, its replacement (combination of stage 8-9) is lame. So we finish week one with ten guys less than a minute from the pink jersey. What organizers want.

Someone said they are taking a different harder approach to Etna that should also be shielded from the wind. I don't believe it, but there it is.