il Giro d'Italia 2013

the fight for pink

(to Giro d'Italia web site)

cycling tactics

the cycling zone

The Tour de France 2017, Russian mountains on steroids!

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the final result - first ten riders in the 2013 giro

1.  Vincenzo Nibal | ITA | AST | 84h 53' 28"
2.  Rigoberto Urán | COL | SKY
3. Cadel Evans | AUS | BMC
4.  Michele Scarponi | ITA | LAM
5.  Carlos Betancur | COL | ALM
6.  Przemysław Niemiec | POL | LAM
7.  Rafał Majka | POL | TST
8. Beñat Intxausti  | ESP | MOV
9. Mauro Santambrogio | ITA | VIN
10. Domenico Pozzovivo | ITA | ALM

update: stage 19 cancelled, stage 20 changed

Thanks to the abysmal weather, including snow unusally low levels, stage 19 - the stage for 24th May - has been cancelled.

This continues an eventful Giro, where Mark Cavendish has won four stages, Bradley Wiggins has retires from illness, while Vincenzo Nibali, in the Maglia Rosa, is now 4 minutes ahead of Cadel Evans.

As well as cancelling stage 19, stage 20 has been modified. The start at Silandro and the finish at Passo Tre Croci are the same, but in between the route is changed. The complete route will be Castelbello, Naturno, Merano, Terlano, Bolzamo, Prato all'Isacco, Chiusa, Bressanone, Sciaves, Vandoies, Chienes, Monguelfo, Villabassa, Dobbiaco, Carbonin, Cimabanche, Cortina d'Ampezzo, il Passo Tre Croci (altitude 1,805m), Misurina , arriving at Tre Cime di Lavaredo (altitude 2340 m). This gives a total of 210 km.

The final peak at Tre Cime di Lavaredo, at 2340 m, will be this year’s Cima Coppi. [Each year the highest peak in the Giro d’Italia is so named, after the deceased champion Italian cyclist, Fausto Coppi.]

revised profile for stage 20, 25th May 2013

the italian giro

The Giro d’Italia, the Tour of Italy, is the first of the major three-week tours - The Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France, the Vuelta d’Espagna - in the annual repertoire of international cycle races.

This year, the Corsa Rosa (Pink race), the Giro d’Italia, takes place from the 4th to 26th May 2013, starting in Naples, after an absence of 50 years, and finishing in Brescia. This year’s race includes close to 75 km of individual time trials, as well as a 17.4 km team time trial.

The 2013 Giro extends over 3,405 km., including a short visit to France on the 19th May to climb the 2,642 m Col du Galibier that separates Savoy from the Hautes-Alpes.

a neapolitan race

With five high mountain stages sandwiched between five medium mountain stages, three time trials and seven sprint stages (though some might dispute the aptness of the description), this year’s Giro might be regarded as being like a Neapolitan ice cream, though with more flavours than just strawberry, vanilla and pistachio.

Here are the first few stage ‘flavours’:

• The first stage is a flat, fast circuit race round Naples and its neighbouring coast, covering over 156 km.
  
  
• The second stage - the team time trial - is on the volcanic island of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples, about 30 km from Naples. [Note to any visitors, don’t swim in the sea there. Having no sewage treatment system, all sewage goes directly into the sea.]
  
  
• The next two stages are hilly, with stage 3 providing sprinting excitement.
  
  
• The fifth and sixth stages are flat, with stage 6 being a true sprint stage.

advertising disclaimer

According to the organisers, this year’s course has been designed around three aspects:

• Balance: the route is balanced and fair, so riders can show their talents and skills, while allowing attacks from the start.
• Respect: the more rider-friendly course is a sign of respect to the riders. That the stages are shorter, on average four hours duration rather than six hours, gives the riders to recover between each hard stage as they should be back at their hotels by 7pm.
• The beauty of Italy: This is been shown off by visiting Naples, Ischia, Matera, Florence, Vicenza, Brescia, as well as climbing mountains legendary to cycling - Galibier [stage 15], Stelvio [stage 19] and the Tre Cime di Lavaredo [stage 20].

There will also be a start in Busseto to honour Giuseppe Verdi [stage 13], and the San Sepolcro-Firenze stage [stage 9] honours Gino Bartali.

Stage 12, starting from Longarone, will commemorate the death of over 2,000 villagers in 1978. Then, a landslide into the lake of the nearby Valjont Dam caused a tsunami that drowned several villages at the base of the dam.

Giro d'Italia 2013 - race map
Click for a large version of the Giro race map

this year’s stages

21 stages are planned, with five high mountain stages, five medium mountain stages, two individual time trials (stages 4 and 21), a team time trial (stage 2) and supposedly seven sprint finish stages. There will be two rest days. All other days are flat stages. The total distance ridden will be 3,405.3 km, kilometres, or roughly 2,116 miles.

this year’s favourites

• Bradley Wiggins (Sky) - 181
• Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) - 31
• Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Sharp) - 1
• Samuel Gonzalez Sánchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) - 91
  and, of course, for the sprints
  
• Mark Cavendish (OPQ) - 151

first ten riders in the 2012 giro

1.  Ryder Hesjedal | CAN | GRM
2.  Joaquim Rodríguez | ESP | KAT
3. Thomas De Gendt | BEL | VCD
4.  Michele Scarponi | ITA | LAM
5. Ivan Basso | ITA | LIQ
6.  Damiano Cunego | ITA | LAM
7.  Rigoberto Urán | COL | SKY
8. Domenico Pozzovivo  | ITA | COG
9.  Sergio Henao | COL | SKY
10. Mikel Nieve | ESP | EUS

the classification jerseys

Here are the four classification jerseys for the 2013 Giro.

The overall winner’s jersey is pink, like the paper on which the sponsoring newspaper is printed.
The points jersey is red to illustrate the fiery passion of the fight for points.
The best climber’s jersey is the blue of the sky to which they are climbing.
The best young rider’s jersey is white like the innocence of youth.

the teams

team	country	code	strip	lead rider
GARMIN SHARP	USA	GRS		1 HESJEDAL  Ryder
AG2R LA MONDIALE	FRA	ALM		11 POZZOVIVO  Domenico
ANDRONI GIOCATTOLI	ITA	AND		21 PELLIZOTTI  Franco
ASTANA PRO TEAM	KAS	AST		31 NIBALI  Vincenzo
BARDIANI VALVOLE - CSF INOX	ITA	BAR		41 MODOLO  Sacha
BLANCO PRO CYCLING TEAM	NED	BLA		51 GESINK  Robert
BMC RACING TEAM	USA	BMC		61 EVANS  Cadel
CANNONDALE PRO CYCLING	ITA	CAN		71 CARUSO  Damiano
COLOMBIA	COL	COL		81 ATAPUMA HURTADO  Darwin
EUSKALTEL EUSKADI	ESP	EUS		91 SANCHEZ GONZALEZ  Samuel
FDJ	FRA	FDJ		101 CASAR Sandy
KATUSHA	RUS	KAT		111 PAOLINI  Luca
LAMPRE-MERIDA	ITA	LAM		121 SCARPONI  Michele
LOTTO BELISOL	BEL	LTB		131 BAK  Lars Ytting
MOVISTAR TEAM	ESP	MOV		141 CAPECCHI  Eros
OMEGA PHARMA - QUICK-STEP CYCLING TEAM	BEL	OPQ		151 CAVENDISH  Mark
ORICA GREENEDGE	AUS	OGE		161 GOSS  Matthew Harley
RADIOSHACK LEOPARD	LUX	RLT		171 BENNETT  George
SKY PROCYCLING	GBR	SKY		181 WIGGINS  Bradley
TEAM ARGOS-SHIMANO	NED	ARG		191 DEGENKOLB  John
TEAM SAXO-TINKOFF	DEN	TST		201 MAJKA  Rafal
VACANSOLEIL-DCM PRO CYCLING TEAM	NED	VCD		211 MARCATO  Marco
VINI FANTINI - SELLE ITALIA	ITA	VIN		221 GARZELLI  Stefano

Watching the Giro - on the roadside, on TV

Watching the Giro in Italy is very similar to watching the Tour in France. abelard.org has several pages giving general advice on how to be a effective road-side spectator.

• Le Tour 2: preparing to watch the Tour
• Le Tour 3: the Great Day arrives
• le Tour 4: preparing to watch a mountain stage

The online version of the Giro d’Italia brochure [56-page .pdf] gives general information about the intended broadcasters for the 2013 Giro, page 20 showing terrestrial broadcast regions on a world map.

eurosport uk:
British Eurosport is providing daily live coverage from all stages of this year’s Giro d'Italia.
One or other of Sky Sports channels is showing highlights during the evening.

using the il Giro web site

1. This web site is created by La Gazzetta dello Sport, an Italian sports newspaper, that has been the organisers of Le Giro cycle race since 1909.
   
   
2. To find details of a stage [tappa], use the navigation bar, that’s the circles and dots, near the top of the page
   
   Note the response time will probably be very slow, this site appears to be regularly overloaded at the moment.
   The navigation pop-up at the bottom of the window just gives basic details of a stage - date, distance and difficulty, start and end towns.
   
   
   While a stage is is actually taking place, this pop-up bar changes and includes the word LIVE!, here indicated with an arrow:
   
   
   Clicking on LIVE! changes the page to a display like below (for a rainy stage 9):
   
   
   Clicking on the time splits changes the road to show the cyclists on the road (the display reverts to just the road when the site is not keeping up):
   
   
   Clicking on the road gives a close-up of the cyclists, with the Maglia Rosa group highlighted:
   
   
   
   
3. For classification information, you must first choose Classifiche from Giro 2013 dropdown menu on the pink navigation bar.
   
   Then when the page updates, there is a new array of navigation choices a bit further down the page:
   
   Tappa - stage, Generali - general, Retrati - retired; tapa golosa - feeding station

Some reference keywords/tags:

Il Giro d'Italia,Tour d'Italie, France, cycling, Naples, Florence, Verdi, Bartali, Valjont, Galibier, Valloire, riders, teams, stages,

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© abelard, 2012, 14 november


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the address for this document is https://www.abelard.org/italy/giro_italia_2013.php