The first Grand Tour of the cycling season – the Giro d’Italia gets underway on Friday Evening (AEST), with many of the best cyclists in the world at the event. This is your full guide to the race, and coverage of it.
This year’s edition will travel over 3,382km with the longest day in the saddle coming on Stage 18 at 244 kilometres, while there are three individual time-trials that are sure to shake up the field. The race finishes on Sunday, May 29.
Luckily enough for us, coverage over the next three weeks is comprehensive and in every way imaginable. You can even keep up on the race if you don’t want to stay up until the early hours of the morning with plenty of highlight coverage across the various TV networks.
As with any cycling Grand Tour it will be 21 stages long, but this year is starting in the Netherlands after it started in Ireland last year. Rest days will be on Monday’s, with the Giro again having three instead of the normal two – to allow for travel from the Netherlands back to Italy.
As was the case last year, both free-to-air TV service SBS and pay-TV provider Eurosport will be providing live coverage of every single stage.
As is the case with most cycling events, the coverage will pick up with the race already underway due to the length of it, although there are some stages that will have extended coverage due to their important or exciting nature.
SBS will generally begin its coverage from around 10:30pm (AEST) each night, with members of its team both at a studio location in Australia and in Italy. Eurosport, on the other hand will provide a ‘Giro extra’ program as they did last year with former professional Juan Antonio Flecha both before and after each stage.
There will also be plenty of ways to watch highlights of each stage. Eurosport will have multiple highlights of different lengths each day, and normally an hour before their coverage of the next stage commences.
SBS will carry a daily highlights package at 5:30pm (AEST), while Fox Sports will do the same from around 9am, both of which will last for half-an-hour.
There are plenty of legitimate options for streaming the race online this year.
SBS will stream to mobile and tablet through their official Giro d’Italia tracker app, while it will be available through desktop on the Cycling Central website.
Foxtel Go will be another way to stream the race online if you have the valid Foxtel sports subscriptions.
Of course, The Roar will have a live blog of every stage.
| Stage number | Date | Start | Finish | Distance |
| 1 | Fri 6th May | Apeldoorn | Apeldoorn | 9.8 km |
| 2 | Sat 7th May | Arnhem | Nijmegin | 189 km |
| 3 | Sun 8th May | Nijmegin | Arnhem | 189 km |
| 4 | Tue 10th May | Catanzaro | Praia a Mare | 191 km |
| 5 | Wed 11th May | Praia a Mare | Benevento | 233 km |
| 6 | Thu 12th May | Ponte | Roccaraso | 165 km |
| 7 | Fri 13th May | Sumona | Foligno | 210 km |
| 8 | Sat 14th May | Foligno | Arezzo | 169 km |
| 9 | Sun 15th May | Radda in Chianti | Greve in Chianti | 40.4 km |
| 10 | Tue 17th May | Campi Bisenzio | Sestola | 216 km |
| 11 | Wed 18th May | Modena | Asolo | 212 km |
| 12 | Thu 19th May | Noale | Bibione | 168 km |
| 13 | Fri 20th May | Palmanova | Cividale del Friuli | 161 km |
| 14 | Sat 21st May | Alpago | Corvara | 210 km |
| 15 | Sun 22nd May | Castelrotto | Alpe di Suisi | 10.8 km |
| 16 | Tue 24th May | Bressanone Brixen | Andalo | 133 km |
| 17 | Wed 25th May | Molveno | Cassano D’Adda | 196 km |
| 18 | Thu 26th May | Muggio | Pinerolo | 234 km |
| 19 | Fri 27th May | Pinerolo | Risoul | 161 km |
| 20 | Sat 28th May | Guillestre | Sant’Anna di Vinadio | 134 km |
| 21 | Sun 29th May | Cuneo | Torino | 150 km |
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