The Giro resumes in Italy with short stage with a big climb.
Magnier-fico: if you could replay a summit finish over and over with the riders who arrive at the foot of the a mountain often the result would be the same. In a sprint it’s very different. With Stage 3 take the riders who were together with 3km to go on the road into Sofia and replay it and the outcome could vary. But the sense is that Paul Magnier would win a lot and Jonathan Milan would too. The problem for Dylan Groenewegen is that he could too only future stages now get harder for him until the Milan criterium on Stage 15.
The Route: 144km and an early unmarked climb after the start but it’s a five minute effort and was tackled a decade ago when the Giro also rolled out of Catenzaro. Then it’s along the coast.
Today is all about the climb midway. The race manual says it’s “easy” and 17km at 5% sounds steady but zoom in because there’s 14km at 6% and the first 8km are close to 7% which is Alpine enough to drop plenty, all on a twisting side road too.
Once past the mountains banner there’s a false flat to the real pass and then a long descent and 40km to the finish with the final 20km on the flat.
The Finish: ah, Cosenza! Its cathedral perched on the hill, the charming cobbled streets, even labelled the Athens of Italy [record scratch sound].
A run past the railway yards, a set of roundabouts where a wrong turn leads to a McDonalds Drive and then a few zigzags in town. It’ll pay to have a good lead out through the streets but they’re wide and the final 450m rise at 3%.
The Contenders: Maglia rosa Thomas Silva (XDS-Astana) is now a name to contend with, he’s got a good finish and every reason to sprint for the win today with team mates Scaroni and Ulissi on hand to help. He’s shown he can win from a group when others have been dropped on a climb. Florian Stork (Tudor) was close on Saturday and could be too and his team will work twice as hard to set him up.
Paul Magnier (Soudal-Quickstep) is the default pick today. Not that he is a certain pick, it’s more that in a range of outcomes he might be one who ends up winning.
The Passo Crocetta ought to be used by teams with a fast finisher as an elimination race, they can set a pace to distance bulky sprinters. So Soudal-Quickstep can ride fast enough to leave Dylan Groenewegen floundering, then Movistar can set a pace too fast for Paul Magnier to the advantage of Orluis Aular and so on. Easier said than done as they have to be left behind early and then the teams that achieve this have to be able to sustain it on the 20km to the finish to keep any chasers away. So in reality Magnier might be dropped but he could come back; or maybe teams don’t like this tactic and Magnier hangs on. Again he’s far from a certain pick, but quick and more agile so he might be able to go for the win when Milan and Gronewegen have been dropped. Kaden Groves (Alpecin-PremierTech) has won this way before but he’s uncertain with injuries on Stage 2. Tobias Lund (Decathlon-CMA CGM) can do well but we’ll see with the climbing.
Francesco Busatto (Alpcein-PremierTech) is another rider who is quick for a stage like today from a small group. Orluis Aular (Movistar) and Corbin Strong (NSN) are fast too, we saw NSN working for Strong on Stage 2
With plenty of riders having lost time already the early breakaway also has a good chance, more than we might have imagined pre-Bulgaria. It’ll have to work hard to build a lead before the climb, this might require sending two riders per team with one to pull and the other to win the stage. António Morgado (UAE) could give his team something to cheer but pick from plenty who face a stage that is neither sprint nor summit finish.
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Magnier, Silva |
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Stork, Bussato, Aular, Strong, Lund, Turner, Morgado |
Weather: sunny, 25°C and an onshore breeze for the passage along the coast. Forecasts say up to 20km/h so not enough to split the peloton normally but teams can try.
TV: the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in from 3.40pm for the Passo Crocetta.
Postcard from Cosenza
Today’s stage is 100% in Calabria and the finish is in Cosenza, the region’s fifth biggest city. It’s the sort of place that should host the Giro regularly but hasn’t finished here since 1989. Swiss rider Rolf Järmann went solo near the finish to win the stage. Järmann would go on to win a Tour stage and the Amstel Gold race twice in the 1990s.
As he told Blick magazine his career overlapped with the EPO doping era. Pressured by his team – Ariostea – to take EPO, he bought it to appease management but threw it away as he hoped to prove he could win without, only for the team doctor to angrily spot his blood values had not changed.
In time he’d use EPO to win. After the Festina affair he decided to stop, only to find when he was planned to attack on a short climb near the finish of a stage of the Tour de Suisse in 1999, just the kind of move that suited him, 60 riders came past him uphill. He had changed ways but the peloton had not.
Järmann had a hobby outside of cycling: computing. It’s a claim that’s difficult to verify but he may have been the first professional athlete to start a blog. He would post brief diary entries and remarks. One day he estimated how much spaghetti he ate in a year, and calculated that laid lengthwise it would cover 5km. That sort of thing.
The hobby became business as he went into internet hosting and web design. During this time he also got into campervans and the two interests combined into a blog about van life which occupies him now, it’s called womoblog, as in Wohnmobil or camping car in German. Maybe he’ll be beside the road somewhere this month?