The Cycliste Moderne, May 6, 2005

Giro d’Italia Preview

As promised, here is the preview of this year’s Giro d’Italia, the first grand tour of the year. The general classification (GC) will likely be very competitive with four past champions at the start.

Sprinters Galore

Fassa Bortolo is not bringing a GC contender to this year’s Giro. The team has been built around delivering Alessandro Petacchi to the finish line. Although it is unlikely that he will match last year’s record of nine stage wins, he certainly will be well positioned to win every field sprint during the Giro.

In an interesting twist, Erik Zabel of T-Mobile will be at the Giro after all, having not originally been scheduled to race in Italy. T-Mobile is not bringing a GC contender either so with a team built to be opportunistic and win stages, Zabel will have a train for the field sprints.

Lotto-Davitamon is also bringing a sprint-focused team. With both Robbie McEwen and Tom Steels, the Belgian superteam will be a factor in the field sprints. Crédit Agricole is bringing Estonian sprinter Jaan Kirsipuu and Kiwi sprinter Julian Dean, and while it will be supporting last year’s podium finisher Pietro Caucchioli for the GC, its sprinters will likely be a factor in this year’s Giro.

This is probably the best field of sprinters that the Giro has seen in some time. The ProTour has clearly benefited the Giro in having a strong international field. Part of Mario Cippolini’s success in the Giro has been the result of the fact that historically he only had to face the fastest Italian sprinters.

Race Favorites

Although there are some difficult and dangerous stages in the first half of this year’s Giro, the GC will not start to take shape until after Stage 11 in the Dolomites. Thus we will put off a comprehensive analysis of the GC until sometime next week. However, the race favorites are all Italians. Lampre-Caffita starts both Cunego and Simoni, although you have to wonder if a team with two leaders has any leader at all after last year’s bad blood between the two teammates. Liquigas-Bianchi has Garzelli. Unlike in past years, foreign teams with GC aspirations have Italian GC riders with legitimate podium chances: CSC has Basso, Discovery has Salvoldeli, Crédit Agricole has Caucchioli. The peleton is devoid, however, of some of the non-Italian GC riders seen in years past. The only past non-Italian podium finisher to return to this year’s Giro is Serhiy Honchar of Domina Vacanze who finished second last year. With no difficult climbs before the first time trial, Ukrainian time trial specialist Honchar could conceivably find himself in pink after the first time trial.


Labor Strife

The advent of the ProTour has resulted in the best field at the Giro in years. However, Giro organizer, RCS, had to avert a boycott by the ProTour teams over the allocation of “start money”. At Liège a couple of weeks ago, RCS met with the ProTour teams and the riders’ union to resolve its desire to negotiate start money with each individual team as had been done in the past. ProTour teams were demanding equal start money for all teams and an increase to 60,000 euro’s per team. Press reports seem to indicate that the parties found some compromise to that dispute.

That is not the end of the strife, however, as it became known this week that RCS is now seeking to reduce the total prize pool at this year’s Giro. That news has caused the riders’ union to express amazement. It has been a few years since a rider’s strike has occurred during a Grand Tour. It is not, however, outside the realm of possibility that if this issue is not resolved to the satisfaction of the peleton, then a strike could neutralize one or more stages of this year’s Giro.

Course Notes

The Giro d’Italia starts on Saturday with the initial and incredibly short 1.15km prologue in Reggio Calabria and ending in Milan after three weeks. The penultimate stage ending in Sestriere probably has the most interesting segment of the race. In homage to the classic days of Coppi, the stage's next to last climb up the Colle delle Finestre includes a final 8.5km over a gravel road. Fortunately, OLN TV will have same day coverage of that stage on Saturday, May 28.