Continental Drift with Andrew Hood: The Best Giro Ever
- By Andrew Hood
- Published May. 10, 2005
The 88th Giro d’Italia is already in full flight and there’s no more beautiful spectacle in cycling than the corsa rosa.
With its passionate tifosi, its dramatic backdrops and action-packed racing, the Giro is the race of the season for many fans worldwide.
While the Tour de France has eclipsed its Italian neighbor in statue and prestige in the past quarter century, the Giro looks to be creeping closer to parity with the French colossus.
Thanks to a variety of reasons, this year’s Giro is sure to be more thrilling than the Tour and a much more entertaining race to watch. Look at the opening three days: Lancaster, Bettini and McEwen – that’s world-class racing.
First off, the 2005 Giro route simply out-guns the Tour.
This year’s grande boucle is rather short on imagination. It appears the Tour brain-trust went on strike – something Frenchies love to do with delight – after delivering imaginative Tours for its 2003 centenary and the 2004 edition that set the stage for Lance Armstrong’s record sixth victory.
It appears that after having thrown everything at Armstrong in vain for six years to try to make it hard for him, it looks as if they’ve decided to take away chances for the Texan to do his thing.
With only one long time trial and three summit finishes, the Tour organization is insisting on a close race – even if it could be rather boring.
The Giro, however, has rebounded with an excellent course following its own rather bland 2004 route. Back are the hormonal climbs in the Dolomites and Alps that make the Giro so spine-tingling as well as two individual time trials, which are sure to be decisive.
The opening week won’t see any major climbs, but Paulo Bettini’s win on Sunday shows that not all of these favor the pure sprinters, either. The flat time trial in Florence will set the stage for some epic racing. The favorites should be relatively close as they plunge into the Dolomites for four hard days starting with stage 11.
But it’s the potential of the final weekend that will keep fans biting their nails to the finale. The Giro seems destined toward a climactic shoot-out over two intense climbing stages in the Alps sandwiched around a key time trial in Torino.
It should be palpitating stuff.
The growing rivalry between Ivan Basso and Damiano Cunego for bragging rights as Italy’s newest and brightest star couldn’t come at a better time.
The Giro couldn’t ask for a better script than having its two newest and brightest stars going head-to-head. Great rivalries make great racing.
Despite promises from former winners Stefano Garzelli and Gilbert Simoni to fight to the death, this Giro is going to be all Basso vs. Cunego.
And once they’re done in Milan, they’re turning current conventional wisdom on its head that the Giro-Tour double is too demanding, and racing the Tour. Hallelujah for that.
Finally, the inclusion of the 20 ProTour teams is nothing but a plus for the Giro.
It’s too bad Armstrong isn’t racing this month. Armstrong’s presence would have pushed the Giro’s growing stature even higher and it’s a shame he’s retiring with tackling the Italian tour. Cycling is poorer for it.
Even without the participation of Big Tex and Big Jan, the Giro has its best lineup in years. As we’ve already seen at such races as Paris-Nice and the Tour de Romandie, the ProTour is making any race a much more demanding effort.
With such teams as Discovery Channel competing in the Giro for the first time and Team CSC coming with ambitions to win, there’s bound to be some serious head-banging along the way and no rolling “piano” across the Italian countryside until the Dolomites.
Interestingly, most of the top non-Italian teams have signed Italian stars to lead their respective Giro assaults, with Discovery bringing Paolo Savoldelli, Credit Agricole with Pietro Caucchioli and Liberty Seguros with Michele Scarponi.
So, in the end, the Giro remains very much Italian – which isn’t such a bad thing at all.
FILED UNDER: Giro d'Italia
Andrew Hood
Hood cut his journalistic teeth at Colorado dailies before the web boom opened the door to European cycling in the mid-1990s. Hood's covered every Tour since 1996 and has been VeloNews' European correspondent since 2002. He lives in Leon, Spain, when he's not chasing bike races.