giro blog 21-3-14

Question how do the stages of the Giro de Italia work?

 

The answer is simple - while the Tour weights flat stages more heavily than mountainous or intermediate ones in the sprint competition, the Giro does not. In the Tour, winning a flat stage will net you 45 points while intermediate stages and mountain top finishes yield only 30 and 20 points respectively. The Giro, on the other hand, offers 25 points for the winner of any stage. If a general classification rider or another climber finishes highly on the mountaintop finishes - and in the Giro, there are plenty of those - then they can steal the jersey. Of course, there are the pesky intermediate sprints on every stage to deal with too, and those offer 8 points to the winner and smaller points to the first six riders across.

To some extent, the ability of a climber to win the points classification is shaped by the course. How many uphill finishes are there, and how many sprint stages? How many times will the sprint teams let a break go to the finish because there is a sharp climb near the finish of an otherwise flat stage, as the Giro so loves to do? In 2011, Alessandro Petacchi lost the lead in the classification early, after 12 stages, but the course then was tilted more heavily towards climbers with a mere four stages that could be called flat ones. This year, the course is balanced - 7 stages for the sprinters, 7 uphill finishes, and one climbing TT. But, the real deciding factor occurs in the race as we see how individual riders are doing.

Mountain finishes are a bit more predictable than sprints - the ratio of watts to kilograms changes little over the span of the race and finishing order changes little. Sprints, however, are chaotic, and dangerous. Split second decisions can be the difference between winning and finishing tenth or fifteenth. If a breakaway stays away on a mountaintop finish, a GC rider may finish fifth instead of first, but this is little like the gap between first and tenth. Simply put, a sprinter must be very, very, consistent to have a chance of winning, especially with so many uphill finishes.