Category: Giro d’Italia
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The cast of the 2014 Giro d’Italia
This is a personal selection of riders to keep an eye on during this year’s Giro and therefore represents the probable cast of this website over the next few weeks. There are quite a few names, so let’s keep this as short as possible. The favourites Nairo Quintana Second in the Tour last year and…
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Grand Tour contenders – who’s racing what in 2014
It’s a common misconception among casual followers of cycling that all the best riders compete in the Tour de France. This is, patently, bollocks. If the route doesn’t suit them, many riders will instead centre their efforts on the Giro or the Vuelta – often both (albeit with greater emphasis on the Italian race, which…
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Some sort of review of the 2013 Giro d’Italia
Let’s quickly take stock of the 2013 Giro before moving onto the Tour de France build-up. This year’s Giro was mostly a cold, brutal race – frequently wet or snowy – but we learnt a lot. Grand Tour contenders Vincenzo Nibali established himself as one of the favourites for any Grand Tour he enters from…
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The best of Mark Cavendish
Mark Cavendish won his fifth stage at this year’s Giro yesterday and so took the maglia rossio passione (great name). He has now won the points classification in all three Grand Tours and it has been far from easy. Many feel that Cav is at his best in a sprint finish, but that doesn’t actually…
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Vincenzo Nibali’s happiness (and the varied feelings of others)
It would be wrong to say that Vincenzo Nibali would have been happy at the bottom of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo climb at the end of stage 20. He was about to face 20km of increasingly difficult uphill cycling and the weather near the top was about as pleasant as an old man’s scrotum.…
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Danilo Di Luca – unfit for employment
When it comes to riders who have been caught doping, there are those from a previous generation where such things were considered the norm; there are those who made a mistake and learnt from it; and then there are repeat offenders who simply don’t seem to give a toss. We could perhaps label that last…
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Vincenzo Nibali positively monsters the cronoscalata
There’s a headline you wouldn’t get on most websites. If you want a clear picture, get yourself a cronoscalata. What did today’s cronoscalata reveal? It revealed Vincenzo Nibali, then a big gap and then everyone else. On a normal stage, two riders can finish simultaneously but in radically different states. One can be cycling within…
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Giovanni Visconti corners the market on memorable stage wins
The perfect denouement to a bike race is when you don’t know whether the peloton is going to catch the break or not. It’s the perfect underdog scenario with a ravenous pack moving more quickly and perhaps a lone rider as quarry, fighting valiantly in the face of an ever-diminishing time gap. In this analogy,…
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Stefano Pirazzi and the King of the Nutcases competition
I’ve mostly been focusing on the general classification with a few nods to the points competition. What I haven’t really covered is the mountains classification. King of the Mountains The leader of the mountains classification tends to be referred to as the King of the Mountains (which always makes me hum this to myself). However,…
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In defence of the Sky mountain train
It was a rest day yesterday, which presents an opportunity to reflect on the race as a whole. I’d therefore like to offer a counterpoint to the prevailing view that Sky’s mountain train tactics are duller than a conversation that flits from cars to mobile phones and then back again. What’s a mountain train? To…