He Italy spin 2024presented this Friday at Turinhumanizes the route, avoids a last week excessively loaded with difficulties, which produced a blockage of the race in the last two editions, and distributes the different obstacles installed on the route much better than in previous years to liven up a race that had been as the dullest and stiffest of the three big events of the cycling season.
It is still too early to know if any of the big stars will dare to travel by Italy (with a brief foray into Swiss) between May 4 and 26, 2024although the organizers have tried to reduce the excessively hard mountain so that it does not make the Giro and Tour double event impossible, the attempt to achieve the double, which the real figures have avoided since 2015 Alberto counter He could not handle the feat in Paris after winning the Italian round. In fact, since Marco Pantani He achieved both races in 1998 – in a year marred by doping that almost caused the suspension of the Tour – no one has ever climbed to the top of the podium again with the pink and yellow jersey in the same year.
Thinking about the double
2024 arrives with an invitation up its sleeve to try for the double. It is not yet known the Tour layout, which is presented on Wednesday October 25 at the Palais des Congrès in Paris, but from what is being reported through specialized websites, it will not be a different French round in terms of script from the one recently presented. The Lapfor its part, is considering the month of December to present the new features drawn for next year.
Now fully focused on the Giro, the test begins in the town of Venaria Reale, adjacent to Turinalready fraught with difficulties in a stage of just 136 kilometers, a common distance in the Tour and Vuelta, but which a few years ago would have been classified as a sacrilege for the purists of the Italian round. In fact, in 2024 there are only three stages over 200 kilometers, with two time trials, one of them with the final 4,000 meters uphill and in honor of San Francisco de Asisso that no climber gets stuck more than necessary with half a Giro ahead.
Input, Oropa
The Tour and the Vuelta have not hesitated lately to take the cyclists up complicated slopes in the first days of competition. The Giro, on the other hand, kept the start dedicated to the ‘volatas’, the sprint in Italian terms. On the other hand, in 2024 the rise to Oropa in the second stage when you visit a sanctuary that almost cost the Giro 1993 to Miguel Indurain before the clutches of Pyotr Ugrumov and where Pantaniin 1999, he surpassed the entire peloton after suffering a breakdown at the base of the pass and then triumphed at the top and alone.
In any case, the organization wants to avoid blocking the race as happened this year after the withdrawal of Remco Evenepoel due to covid at the end of the first week of competition. Or as occurred in 2022 when the surveillance among the top three overall (Jay Hindley, Richard Carapaz and Mikel Landa) only broke in the last three kilometers of the climb to La Marmolada, penultimate day, with an attack by the Australian cyclist; everything that is remembered from a bland edition like a paella without salt.
From Turin to Pompeii
For next year, however, the barriers are being distributed, while the test drops from Turin to Pompeii before starting the road to the Alps. Thus, the Giro enters the unpaved roads typical of the Strade Bianche, in the most beautiful and endearing Tuscanyto then go up through the Apennines but without going over to reach the massif of the Great Sassowhere in 2023 nothing happened, with the weekends having a more lively route so that people do not get bored during their well-deserved break from work and before preparing for the best mountain powder keg, scheduled between Sunday, May 19 and Wednesday, May 22appointments prior to a leisurely finale of the Giro that will end with a massive arrival in Rome with enough time to uncork a bottle of ‘prosseco’.
The end of the test
In this way, on the penultimate Sunday of the competition, after passing through Switzerland, the race will go up to Mottolinoqueen stage, with 5,200 meters of positive gradient and an unprecedented finish across 1,800 meters along a paved ski track for cyclists.
After the second day of rest, we ascend the famous Stelvio, one of the great monuments of the Giro with its 2,750 meters, which will serve as a tribute to the unrepeatable Fausto Coppi, before the two stages entirely through the Dolomites with finishes on Monte Panna and Passo Broco. From there, the ‘maglia rosa’ or the candidates for the garment will only have the difficulty of Monte Grappa, one day from Rome, although with a downhill finish so that no one can think of how it did. Primoz Roglic this year or Hindley in 2022, play it with one card in the last game of the Giro.