In my opinion it wasn't a good day of cycling. I won't bash the cutting of the stage, I do prefer being proactive and preventing possibly very risky situations, wether the organization did the right call my opinion doesn't really matter much, and no-one will ever know the answer to that. Overall I found it a bad day, it's a once-a-year stage which didn't happen, and what did happen was barely seen, the race and the fans lost today...
With that said it was still a brutal day on the road with rain gushing from start to finish, the Fedaia and Cima Coppi, Passo Pordoi were cut from the stage and only the first and last climb were left, there was no fight for the breakaway but the peloton pushed by Ineos and EF brought back the strong breakaway and set Egan Bernal for an easy, second win in the Giro where he extended his lead immensely on his rivals, Romain Bardet and Damiano Caruso performed really well to finish on the podium.
Positive: Almeida and Formolo benifiting from the breakaway and jumping up the GC as expected, Bernal and Ineos taking a massive hit on their main rivals and consolidating further what was already a safe lead. Caruso unsurprisingly but incredibly riding up really well again and climbing to 2nd overall, Bardet also did tremendously well and climbed up to 7th on the overall.
Negative: There was no footage of him, but it would seem as if Remco Evenepoel completely cracked in the rain. Understandable and not a big surprise, but obviously not a good day for the team. Simon Yates was the other rider who lost out, not out of GC contention but loosing 2:37 to Bernal was a big hit, Vlasov was nearby though who also had a bad day.
The Route
An outright nasty day. My first thought looking at this stage was that it wasn't that hard but man was I wrong... The start in Canazei is actually the highest point of the stage and that's probably why, it will be a downhill start and a route that's essentially easy to control until the peloton gets to the deadly sequence of final climbs.
The first one is the Passo di San Valentino, 14.8Km at 7.8% is a brutal climb fit for the pure climbers, which will smash the peloton, but shouldn't see attacks as the main men will wait for the equally (if not actually) harder final climb up to the Sega di Ala. This one tops with just 38 kilometers to go.
As for the final climb it's pure vicious. The details are right beside you, the average gradients are brutal but when you see the final 1.5Km smoothen out quite a bit more, and there's a tiny flat section halfway up the climb you realize that most of it is at around 11% stacked with hairpins and a 2.5Km area will be mostly at 13% and above.
The Weather
No rain. No rain??? Yes it seems like it'll actually be - get ready - acceptable weather! No rain and temperatures around 15 degrees, the riders will be so grateful! The wind will be strong through, probably more in the exposed sections, coming from southwest which means a regular headwind throughout the stage, the climbs arent really exposed though, the final climb has tons of hairpins so the possible headwind won't really be felt.
The Favourites
This is a combination of two brutal climbs and how this stage will pan-out is at this point a mystery. When I first saw this stage I had no doubt it is a day for the GC men, with a downhill start and serious differences sure to be made on the ascents. However breakaways have taken the grand majority of non-flat stages, chances are on them from the start, and second you just can't really tell if there will be a team putting in the needed work to catch a breakaway, and I doubt because Bernal is still showing no signs of problems in his back and looks unbeatable, everyone else looks in the fight for the podium at the moment. If a team commits they can easily control a gap I won't lie, but there hasn't been much logic to the race so I doubt that'll happen. Bernal will race conservatively for sure comparing to other stages, but attack if he feels like he can take even more time, but the attacks will have to come from the likes of Yates, Vlasov and Carthy who all had underwhelming performances in Cortina d'Ampezzo.
Without the rain I wouldn't expect to see Romain Bardet riding as strong as he did today, however as 7th he has to move to go up the overall, together with Ciccone they have been quite consistent so far and on a good day can move up, the only GC rider who will be riding truly conservatively is Damiano Caruso who keeps making a perfect race and has no reason to be putting himself, or his reduced team in the wind.
For those looking to raid the GC it's not a good day, they can easily be chased. So don't expect Almeida, Formolo in the break, also huge gaps can be made in those climbs so they can actually profit from tomorrow well if they hang tough and someone in front suffers. Dan Martin I would say is already far enough to have freedom, aswell as everyone behind him, who should be focusing specifically on the stage wins, possibly KOM classification depending on the rider.
The list is big. I doubt the breakaway will be full of quality tomorrow, some rouleurs and possibly sprinters will make it up the road because they will have a much easier time powering away from the group, so the list I'm putting out is big:
George Bennett & Koen Bouwman
Vincenzo Nibali & Bauke Mollema & Gianluca Brambilla
Lorenzo Fortunato
Antonio Pedrero & Dario Cataldo
Tanel Kangert
Eduardo Sepulveda
Michael Storer & Chris Hamilton
Simon Carr
Rudy Molard
Victor Lafay
Harm Vanhoucke
Geoffrey Bouchard
James Knox
Jan Hirt
Matteo Fabro & Felix Grossschartner
The list is big because for sure few pure climbers will make it in front, and we can have a very lowkey winner like some we've seen so far in this race. Out of these for sure some will be in front, those who do can fight for the win, most others should try to save as much energy as possible for the final two stages in the mountains.
Prediction Time
⭐ Vlasov, Caruso, Ciccone, Carthy, Fortunato, Storer, Hamilton, Sepulveda, Molard, Lafay, Vanhoucke, Knox, Fabbro
Antonio Pedrero came into form in the second week and he's absolutely flying at this point. With Soler out Movistar have been focusing on the breakaways and they have been doing so quite well, the Spaniard has freedom, the team to put him in position for it and the legs to take a win in a brutal mountain stage.
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