Giro 2011 route

[Andrija]

The route has been presented on Saturday.
As in recent years, it looks more attractive than the Tour, but this time my impression is that they've, maybe, overdone it.
As most of viewers, I like to watch riders racing in mountains, but if there's too much climbing, it starts to be boring. Like you're eating your favorite meal every day... Soon, it won't be your favorite any more.
It's brutal route. It favors pure climbers and more universal GT riders will think twice if they should even start the race. It looks to me that it will be very hard even to ride (and finish) both the Giro and the Tour next season.
And, opposite to organizers' expectations, it could develop in very boring race regarding GC.
I hope Ricco and Rujano will ride it and be strong opponents to Liquigas.

On the other hand, Tour of California will benefit from this kind of route.

http://www.gazzetta.it/Speciali/Giroditalia/2010/it/

 

[swampy1970]

Originally Posted by Andrija .

The route has been presented on Saturday.
As in recent years, it looks more attractive than the Tour, but this time my impression is that they've, maybe, overdone it.
As most of viewers, I like to watch riders racing in mountains, but if there's too much climbing, it starts to be boring. Like you're eating your favorite meal every day... Soon, it won't be your favorite any more.
It's brutal route. It favors pure climbers and more universal GT riders will think twice if they should even start the race. It looks to me that it will be very hard even to ride (and finish) both the Giro and the Tour next season.
And, opposite to organizers' expectations, it could develop in very boring race regarding GC.
I hope Ricco and Rujano will ride it and be strong opponents to Liquigas.

On the other hand, Tour of California will benefit from this kind of route.

http://www.gazzetta.it/Speciali/Giroditalia/2010/it/

The Giro looks farking hard. It'll only take one or two days of bad weather in the hills and there'll be carnage. I don't think there'll be many Tour favorites there. Excellent stuff, the Giro organizers should be applauded for this. At last a real war of attrition and a chance of old school racing. Pitty they couldn't find a 300Km flat stage on the coast with a bunch of cobbles, then it'd would have everything.

Not only will it be harder for those who want to win but those who want to avoid being cut from the race will have to ride damned hard to beat the time cutoff...

... that said, the Giro seems to be a little lenient when it comes to "forgetting" about that if too many riders miss the time cut.

 

[slovakguy]

Originally Posted by Andrija . On the other hand, Tour of California will benefit from this kind of route.

agreed. zomegnan has done the toc a monster favour with this route. he's guaranteed an italian victory by driving the tdf contenders away to more reasonable tune-ups.

 

[swampy1970]

After the popularity of the mountain stages in the ToC, I'm hoping they'll move a little further east and take some of the really farking big climbs. There's more than a few that gain 5,000+ft in evelation...

 

[Andrija]

Originally Posted by swampy1970 .

After the popularity of the mountain stages in the ToC, I'm hoping they'll move a little further east and take some of the really farking big climbs. There's more than a few that gain 5,000+ft in evelation...

The ToC route has been announced too.
Mount Baldy and Thousand Oaks are highlights of the course.

Back to the Giro.
Zoncolan will again feature as mountain - top finish, but this time it will come after Monte Crostis, maybe even harder ascent. These two are very similar in gradient and length and very near to each other. The area isn't the most cycling - friendly one... Engineer who designed these roads didn't think about cyclists. Or he did? I'm not sure.

Edit:
Have you noticed the length of the stages?
9 over 200 kilometers, only two of them are categorized as flat and 5 as high mountain. It really is a brutal course.

 

[swampy1970]

Originally Posted by Andrija .



The ToC route has been announced too.
Mount Baldy and Thousand Oaks are highlights of the course.

Yeah. I spotted that a few weeks back.

Was hoping that they'd possibly take in some of the monsters on the eastern side of the Sierras. I went up a few of them about a month or so ago that were a bit hard, then again anything that climbs from ~3,500ft to over 10,000ft and 30+km long aint gonna be easy.

 

[pennstater]

May 20th through may 22nd (fri, sat, sun) will make for some of the hardest 3 days of racing in a row that I can recall (Sunday has 5 climbs/230 kms in length). Then to follow that up after the rest day on monday is a mountain TT on Tuesday.

 

[limerickman]

Yeah, RCS have managed to make the Giro more interesting than the TDF by including some great climbing routes in recent years.

But 2011 route seems to have taken this concept to another level and there is too much climbing in my opinion.

 

[swampy1970]

Originally Posted by limerickman .

Yeah, RCS have managed to make the Giro more interesting than the TDF by including some great climbing routes in recent years.

But 2011 route seems to have taken this concept to another level and there is too much climbing in my opinion.

I think it's an interesting ploy. In recent years the trend by the riders is to attack later which reduces the old 'war of attrition' that used to happen prior to the mid/late 80's. If the riders aint gonna bring about more of a spectacle then I guess the organizers decided to take matters into their own hands and induce long range pain on the riders...

... but, as with any race, it's only as hard as the riders make it. There is no time limit for the winner of a stage - everyone could decide to ride tempo for the first 200km of the hard stages and just go nuts the last 50 to 100km... It's the sprinters and guys in the groupetto that are gonna get it the worst.