A few days before the start of this years Giro I was trying to predict the final top-5 and I was finding it really difficult. It appeared that the field was light on quality grand-tour contenders almost as if the Giro was threatening to join the Vuelta e Espana as a second-tier Grand Tour below the Tour de France.
Back in the early 90's most of the Tour contenders would be in Italy and, apart from Greg Lemond who pioneered using one grand tour as conditioning for another, racing for the win. So when I looked down the start list for the Giro and could only rate Basso, Vinokourov, Pellizzoti, Evans and Sastre I really worried for the future of the Giro, especially with the current problems in Italian PRO cycling. Then Pellizzoti was benched.
So after the first plays of the Giro, I decided to write about how poor the Giro field was this year and what sort of message this sends out to both cycling fans and the general public alike. But before I started writing, I felt compelled to do some research and once I had, I was left quite surprised. The field isn't as weak as it initially appears. If you look at the results of the three Grand Tours since from 2005 until 2009, there are 76 riders who have finished in the top-10 of all these events, dopers and all, 20 percent of those riders were on the Giro start line in Amsterdam. This is likely to be the same percentage for the Tour in July, despite having to take a low-risk guess as to who will be on the start-line. In the Giro there are three riders who've won a Grand Tour and, taking out Pellizzoti, three riders who have been on the podium at Grand Tours. Again, not too dissimilar to the Tour, where there are likely to be five Grand Tour winners and five riders who have placed on the podium.
So why does it feel like the Giro is being short-changed, yes a couple of those Grand Tour winners don't have the greatest history with regards to doping. A couple more of the top names riding would help as well. But I think the reason that four stages in it doesn't seem that good is the carnage that has been brought by three days in The Netherlands. Looking down the list of quality riders in this years Giro - those with recent pedigree at Grand Tour events from 2005-2009 and the list looks like this along with their current standings:
- Nibali MR
- Basso +13
- Vinokourov +33
- Karpets +39
- Tirilongo +59
- Cunego +1.43
- Evans +1.59
- Sastre +2.13
- Garzelli +2.49
- Arroyo +3.43
- Wiggins +4.36
- Petrov +10.05
- Simoni +11.04
- Bruseghin +11.57
- Pozzovivio +11.33
- Vandevelde DNF
It will be interesting to see if more than half of the final top-10 will be made up of riders from the list above. It will take some effort by the favourites to get themselves back up to the top, especially if they are targeting another Grand Tour in a few weeks time. But perhaps it's not so much a case of riders overlooking the Giro this year, it's as much a case of overlooking some of the riders. Perhaps, given the results of recent Giro's, it is no bad thing to get fresh blood onto the results sheet.
Photo: Druifkes
