AcademyCC said:
Explain to me why the Giro is better or is this an 'in' joke? How can it be?
The Tour is often raced by 30 people who don't want to lose (hence why we had two weeks of jockeying for position with little real action before it exploded in the final week). The Giro is usually raced by 15 people who really want to win. Hence the racing is more aggressive, the parcours usually better (no "we will have a week of flat stages before anything of any relevance" for them), and because it doesn't have the world's eyes on it, it's less of a fear factor to lose.
In the 2010 Tour, for example, on one stage, Garmin put their team on the front on the run in after the final mountain. Why? Because Chris Horner and Rubén Plaza were in the breakaway. Why was that a problem? Because it meant Ryder Hesjedal would lose 10th place. 10th!!! In most races losing 10th place is nothing, you just go out and attack the next day to get it back. Look at what Kanstantsin Siutsou did in the Giro to get that top 10 place back - let it go, waited for a transitional stage and went. And the teams of riders like Arroyo, placed just outside the top 10, were happy to let him go, because they figured they could get back in the same way.
To be honest, this year was an awful year for GTs. The Giro was sewn up after a week, with Contador being so clearly better than anyone else, and was tainted by Wouter Weylandt's unfortunate death. It did, however, give us some of the best stages of the year, with the stage to Rifugio Gardeccia being probably the best racing all year. There wasn't one guy on the suicidal break out of desperation - there were multiple GT contenders going for it three mountains out. The Tour was open until the last minute, but only because nothing happened for two weeks except half the field crashed out. And of course there will be crashes if there is nothing to break the field up, because everybody still has interests to defend. Useless. And the Vuelta at least remembered a GT has to be more than a week long, but unfortunately forgot it has to be more than 2 weeks long, and besides, seemed incredibly reluctant to put any challenges more than 20km from the end of their stages.