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.
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