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The 2013 Giro d'Italia makes Le Tour second-best

26th May, 2013
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Giro d'Italia 2013 (Image: Sky)
Expert
26th May, 2013
16
1057 Reads

What does Italy do better than France? Coffee, gelati and grand tour bike races.

It’s often asked which specific cycling event deserves the title of being the best.

The world championships, one of the classics, or one of the grand tours? Naturally, most people gravitate to the French end of the spectrum.

For most people, the sheer enormity of Paris-Roubaix or Le Tour itself means they take the cake, easily.

For me, however, it’s all about the Giro. It’s a three week affair packed with individual stages that themselves are so engrossing that they could easily rival a classic for entertainment value. It’s like a test match comprised of Twenty20 games.

It possesses remarkable flair from day to day such that one can view an individual stage without knowledge of the ongoing battles but loose nothing. Meanwhile the Giro still rewards the patient observers as each day presents a challenge to the narratives of our favourite protagonists.

Depressing days in the teaming rain. Summit ascensions surrounded by snow. Daring descents in the dry contrasted with absolutely edge of the seat fingernail ‘chewingly’ terrifying descents in the wet.

The 2013 version saw Bradley Wiggins battling the media, illness, his bike, the twitter sphere and his own teammates. We saw Mark Cavendish fighting tooth and nail to make it over elevated obstacles towards stage sprints. Riders crashing, getting back up and fighting for another day. Whole teams of staff, exhausted by long transfers yet still plugging on as the flotilla of fun snowballs onward.

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Entire regions of Italy brought to a standstill as this once in a lifetime sporting armada passes through town. The Giro is grand on every level and that’s why I love it.

We tend to see two things at Le Tour: Either a routine flat stage smothered to death by the sprinters trains, or a hill top finish held to ransom by the deathly python squeeze of Teams such as Sky. It’s formulaic.

There’s no doubt that that in recent years the Tour has begun to diversify its offerings, but on the whole it’s still got a way to go.

Perhaps it says something for our expectations when the most anticipated battle of this years tour is that of impending twitter stoush between the world’s most famous cycling WAGs. It is social media handbags at ten paces and let Cathy Wiggins and Michelle Cound have at it.

I applaud the two for simply calling a spade a spade rather than hiding behind diplomatic nomenclature but that’s another debate for another day. Right now it’s Giro versus the tour and the Giro has come out swinging.

It’s the ample opportunities for the opportunists that make the Giro more exciting than the Tour.

Amongst the standard flat and mountain stages the Giro has taken to including a variety of stages that still force the riders to race.

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These stages tend to be an eclectic mix of flat, narrow, technical and undulating roads that don’t really suit climbers or sprinters.

Finally by placing crucial climbs and descents very close to stage finishes they force the General Classification contenders to race whether they like it or not.

Even if GC teams choose to let a break go, these technical finales force the GC contenders to fight for position at the front of the peloton. In turn this forces the pace of the peloton upward, which then means the early break never gets too far out of sight.

And thus the scene is set, every team and every rider has a whiff of victory in their nostrils. White line fever sets in the race literally explodes.

The local teams and the one day specialists are looking to light it up, catch the breakaway and cross the line first with their local livery prominent on display.

Other teams are looking to defend or defeat their rivals as vital king of the mountain points are near. If they get a decent gap over the top of the hill, heck, they’ll have a crack at the stage too.

Sprinters’ teams are looking to keep the pace steady and not allow the whippets amongst them too much leeway in the hope of remaining in contact. This also sews the seeds for a scintilating descent.

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Then the teams with GC contenders are all sweating nervously as they face yet another ‘banana peel’ stage. On paper the stage looks easy, but someone is going to slip up, they always do. Each contender just hopes it won’t be him.

After the bomb has gone off and there are riders everywhere it’s equivalent to taking the top twenty riders of the Giro and throwing them in a club race.

No teams to buffer them, no sprint trains to hide behind, just the big names with nothing to prop them up but their own legs, and that’s bloody fantastic.

It’s just so refreshing to observe the GC contenders in these tactical stoushes as well as the regular wars of attrition upon craggy mountain peaks.

Throw in these regular mountaintop finishes along with a few stock standard sprint days and you have the perfect grand tour.

With this impeccable selection of stages the Giro will captivate and consume you to a degree that no race can ever match. So when it comes around again next year, make sure you don’t miss out.

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