The Giro's route is....

[issoisso]

Absolutely insane
Sorry to make a separate topic about this, but I fear this would be lost in the topic about the presentation itself.
If anyone predicted this course they'd be laughed out of the room.

It's a Giro. It's supposed to have insane climbs in a fairly large number. Nothing out of the ordinary by its standards, and nothing too easy.

The final week will destroy the mere mortals, as usual.
But only 23kms of non-mountain individual time trialing? WOW.

In short, this is insane, nothing like this has ever been seen...and I can't wait.
1 Amsterdam Prologue (8,4km)
2 Amsterdam - Utrecht (209km). pancake flat
3 Amsterdam - Middelburg (209km). Average incline: 0%. literally. look out for strong winds and thus splits
4 Savigliano - Cuneo TTT (32.5km). longer than the past few of years
5 Novara - Novi Ligure (168km). sprint. small climb 50kms from the line to honour the 50th anniversary of Coppi's death
6 Fidenza - Carrara (166km). Small climbs near the finish. Say goodbye to the sprinters. It's not a mountain stage, but there will be fireworks
7 Carrara - Montalcino (215km). One Small climb near the finish. Finishes with 10kms of gravel roads near the finish. Again, either fireworks or a break takes the jersey.This will be tricky
8 Chianciano Terme - Terminillo (189km). As usual, the Giro has a not-so-hard mountain at the end of the first week. The time differences will be small, but they will be there. Make no mistake, it's a mountain allright. And it's been used a few times before, always in this role of "the only early climb of the Giro"
9 Frosinone - Cava de Tirreni (188km). Bunch sprint....uphill.
10 Avellino - Bitonto (220km). bunch sprint. long stage, though.
11 Lucera - L'Aquila (256km). Tough stage, the stereotypical "peloton takes it easy, break wins by 15 mins" stage. Longest stage. Dedicated to Candido Cannavò, deceased this year.
12 Città Sant'Angelo - Porto Recanati (191km). sprint.
13 Porto Recanati - Cesenatico (222km). Hard stage, but a sprint. Arrival at Pantani's home town.
14 Ferrara - Asol. (201km).Monte Grappa topping out at around 40-50kms from the line. Then downhill and flat to the finish. No time gaps just yet.
15 Mestre - Zoncolan (218km). Three smaller climbs and then the hardest mountain in Italy.
2nd Rest Day
16 San Vigilio di Marebebe - Plan de Corones/Kronplatz ITT (12.9km). See the 2008 Giro. 24% incline on concrete/gravel, etc etc.
17 Brunico - Peio Terme (237km). Not a hard finishing climb, but a harder one before. Not many time gaps, but....something. Which contender can sprint better?
18 Levico Terme - Brescia (151km). Last sprinters' stages. Pancake flat
19 Brescia - Aprica (km). Aprica, Trivigno, Mortirolo (tops at 33kms from the line) and Aprica again. The final climb isn't steep AT ALL. 4.5% so it'll all be waged on the Mortirolo.
20 Bormio - Ponte di Legno (178km). The penultimate stage is the MAJOR Dolomiti stage. 5 climbs. Gavia (cima coppi, obviously) and the final climb on the Passo del Tonale. Just so someone dies en route.
21 ITT (15.3km). NOT FLAT. A decently sized climb in the middle. Very technical with tight turns. And absolutely no time to recover from the previous day, so expect surprises. Hopefully it'll all come down to this day.

 

[Mellow Velo]

It's why the real die hards love this race the most.
Maybe this current fad of reduced ITTing has something to do with power output and the clinic?
Or maybe, they have just ralised it makes for a defensive race?

Anyhow, awesome final week.
Something even next year's Tour can only dream about.

 

[Cartesian Centaur]

Man, I love this race.

 

[Delicato]

Remember what everyone were saying 'bout 08 Giro? Extremely difficult third week, blah-blah, and what actually happened? The winner was the guy who haven't won a single stage, the guy who rode a good ITT and just defended in the mountains. I fear that TTT will decide the winner and that would be either Pellizotti (Basso) or Sastre/Menchov (not sure about their TTT teams).

I think that this year's Tour and Vuelta destroyed any hopes of having a really spectacular mountainous GT, the races were a boredom. The last true GT (IMO) was the 05 Giro, an amazing thing to watch.

 

[ak-zaaf]

This is insane.
I love it.

Hopefully some doped-up Italian will be willing to blow the race up from Terminillo on.


Now even more than last years, if you want to win this race you can forget about the tour. Let's hope some climbers choose the Giro next year.

 

[icefire]

It's why the real die hards love this race the most.
Maybe this current fad of reduced ITTing has something to do with power output and the clinic?
Or maybe, they have just ralised it makes for a defensive race?

Anyhow, awesome final week.
Something even next year's Tour can only dream about.

Menchov built his victory on its TT advange over other riders in 2009. Same with Contador in 2008. I don't think the race was boring in any of these years but it seems that they want to change that. Personally I think the course it's too biased for climbers.

Aside from this, I wonder if descending from the Gavia summit to Ponte di Legno is a good idea after Horrillo's fatal crash this year. Does anyone know if this has been done frequently?

 

[BYOP88]

Prudhomme pay attention!!!!!!

 

[Boeing]

Hopefully we will get to watch it on Universal with Steve Schlanger & Todd Gogulski

 

[Mellow Velo]

Menchov built his victory on its TT advange over other riders in 2009. Same with Contador in 2008. I don't think the race was boring in any of these years but it seems that they want to change that. Personally I think the course it's too biased for climbers.

Aside from this, I wonder if descending from the Gavia summit to Ponte di Legno is a good idea after Horrillo's fatal crash this year. Does anyone know if this has been done frequently?

I bet that would come as a surprise to him.
Not really sure what you mean.
Sure, Pedro had a near death experience, but they didn't climb the Gavia last year.

 

[icefire]

I bet that would come as a surprise to him.
Not really sure what you mean.
Sure, Pedro had a near death experience, but they didn't climb the Gavia last year.

Most Gavia climbs I remember are from the South side (Ponte di Legno) to the summit and descending the North side to Bormio. The road on the South side is narrower and with less (if any) protections against a 'free fall' than in the North side. So climbing from the North side as they'll do next year makes for a very dangerous descent.

 

[titan_90]

Awesome

The 2010 Giro is going to be awesome, I can't wait!

The ASO can learn from RCS on how to design a spectacular parcour. That third week is going to be brutal

Steephill has the maps and profiles in PDF for each stage

 

[icefire]

The ASO can learn from RCS on how to design a spectacular parcour. That third week is going to be brutal

ASO does not need to learn. They know how to do a great race course. They just don't want to. They only know why.

 

[benpounder]

Steephill has the maps and profiles in PDF for each stage

Or you can go to the official site at http://www.gazzetta.it/Speciali/Giroditalia/2010/en/.

...blows my mind that CN cant put in these hyperlinks into the original story.

 

[davidw]

Menchov built his victory on its TT advange over other riders in 2009. Same with Contador in 2008. I don't think the race was boring in any of these years but it seems that they want to change that. Personally I think the course it's too biased for climbers.

Aside from this, I wonder if descending from the Gavia summit to Ponte di Legno is a good idea after Horrillo's fatal crash this year. Does anyone know if this has been done frequently?

Errr... Horrillo is, fortunately, alive.

 

[davidw]

14 Ferrara - Asol. (201km).Monte Grappa topping out at around 40-50kms from the line. Then downhill and flat to the finish. No time gaps just yet..

Oh yeah! I'm there! They go through Asolo once before going up the mountain. If the weather's nice, it looks like a good day to ride up to Asolo, watch the race, then ride home.

There'll be a few time gaps though, if they put the finish in Asolo proper, which is at the top of a small hill. Maybe not big ones, but an uphill sprint after doing Monte Grappa will leave a few stragglers.

 

[doddy13]

ASO does not need to learn. They know how to do a great race course. They just don't want to. They only know why.

Well they know that however much their course sucks, you're still going to watch, and so are all those millions who watch the tour de france, and only the tour.

Anyway, the last giro week is very wow. Only one thing saddens me about it, it's over 6 months away.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Now, for an opposing view.

I think there are too many flat stages, and with two exceptions, the mountain stages aren't as brutal as you're making them out to be Issoisso. Compared to something like 1995 to 1997, which were brutal - nearly 500km longer than this. Maybe I'm just taking exception to your statement that-

In short, this is insane, nothing like this has ever been seen...and I can't wait.

The Giro starts out with many flat, sprinter stages. As a matter of fact, aside from Stage 8, which will see a few attacks, but no huge splits, the first 14 stages are not mountainous at all. That's two weeks of riders rolling along, with few GC splits, to a probable field sprint.

Stage 15 to Zoncolon will be difficult, the length doing most of the damage at 200km before the final climb. This will indeed be a great day to watch.

Stage 16 is an awesome edition, if it's not rained/snowed out, but it's short at 12.9km.

Stage 17 is mostly just long, and I don't expect GC splits.

Stage 18 is another flat day where someone will take a flyer to victory.

Stage 19 has the brutal Motirolo, but considering where it lies, and the fact that GC contenders in recent years don't attack until the last 5km of each day, we could actually not see real splits here.

Stage 20 is indeed tough, and this should be an epic stage with very tired riders. This one day along may make up for the first two weeks.

Stage 21 is a good way to finish.

All in all, I'd say it has potential to be a good Giro, still better than most Tour courses, but I don't see it being that insane.

Maybe I'm missing something?

 

[luckyboy]

Pretty great route, just hope that the TTT doesn't ruin things. The profile looks all uphill though, but how steep?

 

[issoisso]

Now, for an opposing view. ...

Maybe I'm missing something?

Not so much missing, as misinterpreting. What's insane is the lack of flat time trial kms. I don't think we've ever seen a GT like this since time trials were introduced.

That's the insane part
As I said at the top of my post, the climbs are par for the course at the Giro.

 

[guncha]

First two weeks look quite boring. I guess that TDF would have been highly criticized if it had only one GC mountain stage (single col stage) during the first 13 days of racing. Final week is tough but the same goes to the tour.
The only hard mountaintop finish of a road stage is Zoncolan. Corones ITT is a huge challenge as well. All the other mountaintop finishes don't look hard (Terminillo is ok but it is not H.C. anyway). Then there are some other brutal climbs but they are quite far from the finish or they are followed by gentle mountaintop finishes.
All in all, this Giro will provide four brutal GC mountain stages and some other three that might shake up the GC. However, this Giro is very unfair to ITTs because it has only 24km of a flat/small climb ITT (I discount Corones here) while TTT is 32,5km long.

 

[Big_Blue_Dave]

I like the look of it, having looked at the profiles of all the stages. It will certainly suit a top climber, but one with a very good team as well.

The stage to Aprica will most likely be like the stage in 2006 which Basso won, though with the Gavia in it should see slightly smaller gaps than those created in that race.

The stage that interests me the most however is the one to Monte Zoncolan, 2 relatively easy climbs with the Passo Duron sandwiched in between as real leg sappers before 10km of agony to the finish, if the weather is not a its best it will be a real slugfest with the contenders to survive the stage.

I like the stages in Holland, as I feel that just like this years Vuelta, there could be some splits caused, this time by wind rather than rain. So it will take some good racers to stay at the front. The prologue certainly takes in the best part of Amsterdam and would be great for anyone to attend.

My only real disappointment, though its me being very pinickity(sp), is the lack of a real Alpine stage in the North West of the country as I would have loved to see the Colle delle Finestre again, or a stage that takes in the Col du Vars and Col d'Izoard finishing in Briancon.

Other than that it really does set the stage for a cracking three weeks, much better than the 2010 TdF.

 

[auscyclefan94]

The Giro route is perfect for Sastre or Pellizotti. hardly any tt km's and all the tt's are short or Mountain tt's. I don't think this course will suit Menchov well. I do prefer last years course but the climbs this year are quite viscious. Almost scary

 

[powderpuff]

Hands up those who think Cadel should still bypass the TdF for the Giro. TTT and low ITT kms definitely will be big factor in that decision.

 

[Polish]

The Cobra

Will "The Cobra's" team be invited - Italian team Ceramica Flaminia?

Seems the course may suit his strengths!

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uci-reduces-riccos-suspension-back-to-20-months#

 

[Race Radio]

Beautiful route.

4 TT's will open up the racing. While it may seem contradictory TT's are like rest days for most riders. warm up, hard 20-45 minutes, cool down. Should be an exciting race with plenty of memorable racing.