Usually, the second time trial of a Grand Tour is a decisive one. A three-week race will often feature a TT in the final week, or perhaps the penultimate weekend, and it will have a significant impact on the final standings. It’s always there looming during the mountains as a last-minute bonus for some, and a late disruption for others.
But this year, in a Giro d’Italia that is already experimenting with the form of a Grand Tour, all the time trialling kilometres are already complete after 10 stages, leaving 10 more days for the general classification to be changed and rearranged.
In many ways, the lack of any more time trialling in this race is an exciting prospect. When there’s a particularly late TT – on the final or penultimate day, as has been in the Giro in recent years – it can act as a caveat, as riders, teams, and we as onlookers know there are certain riders who are guaranteed to take or lose time. Riders may attack less in the mountains, knowing they will take time against the clock.
This year, there is no caveat; there is no TT for anyone to rely on. What happens in the next ten days will decide who wins, and riders will have to go toe-to-toe in the mountains if they want to take time and move up the GC. There may be fewer summit finishes left than usual, but there’s a huge amount of climbing thanks to a loaded final week.
The rest of this race is also particularly open after Tuesday’s stage 10 time trial, as, perhaps also unusually, the shifts on GC were more subtle than big, race-defining changes. In truth, really, everything is still to play for.
Some of this is thanks to the positioning of the TT – legs are fresher than they will be in the final few days of the Giro, when tiredness can exacerbate weaknesses in the discipline – and also the rain that fell. The wet was, unfortunately for some and fortunately for others, something of a leveller in Pisa.
The riders who got to race in drier conditions, like Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) and Max Poole (Picnic PostNL), were the fastest GC finishers, beating Primož Roglič and Juan Ayuso, whilst most of the other overall contenders lost time on the two pre-race favourites.
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Just one rider was slower than Roglič but faster than Ayuso, and that was Ineos Grenadiers’ Thymen Arensman, who also enjoyed some dry roads and moved three places into the top 10.
However, even those who lost time to Roglič and Ayuso lost less than you may expect in a Grand Tour’s final TT. Riders can capitulate big chunks of time across a 25 or 30km TT, and hopes of top 10 finishes can go down the drain, but in Pisa, across 28km, most riders managed to limit their losses.
Richard Carapaz, Giulio Ciccone and Michael Storer were the GC riders who lost the most, probably expectedly given their lack of TT specialty, but even those losses were at most a minute and a half to Roglič, with Egan Bernal the biggest victim at 1:43 down on the Slovenian due to a crash. Riders like Simon Yates and Antonio Tiberi ran pretty close to the Red Bull rider, who is meant to be the top TT specialist among the GC riders.
The result is that, at the end of the day, only 2:27 separates leader Isaac del Toro (UAE Emirates-XRG) and 10th-placed Arensman. This is a reasonable number for stage 10 of a Grand Tour, but it’s small margins at a point where there’s no more time trialling. Anyone in the top 10 could still feasibly win this race; anyone in the top 15 could probably get into the top five.
And the good news is, there are ample opportunities to make these moves. The race is climbing again as early as tomorrow, with 3,800m of elevation on the cards and a climb in the final 12km of stage 11.
Stage 11 brings some punchy climbs in the finale and an uphill finish, stage 15 sees the return of the threatening Monte Grappa, and then next week is chock-full of climbing. Stage 16 finishes on an 18km climb, stage 19 features almost 5,000m of elevation, and then, of course, there’s the small issue of the Colle delle Finestre on the penultimate day.
That all means that margins of less than a minute between Ayuso and Roglič, or two or three minutes between the top 15, could very soon mean absolutely nothing, and there’s no TT lifeline to change your trajectory if you’re not up to it in the mountains.
The favourites are still the favourites
All that said, however, no matter how open the rest of the race can be, what Tuesday revealed to us is that the pre-race favourites Roglič and Ayuso are still very much the favourites, and the two strongest riders in the race. With more climbing approaching, they’re both making gains, and they look to be on a collision course towards GC battle.
On the first summit finish of the race, Ayuso struck the first blow as Roglič was caught sleeping, but the Slovenian still looked strong on the Tagliacazzo finish. They were equally bashed up by crashes in Sunday’s gravel stage, though Roglič yielded time, but then in the TT, the Slovenian went 19 seconds faster than Ayuso, closing the gap between the two on GC.
Both strong time trialists, in any other Grand Tour, the pair might be eyeing up a late TT as an opportunity to steal time on one another, but this isn’t an option here. They’re going to have to do it in the mountains.
Despite some very tough climbing stages still to come, only two feature summit finishes (stages 16 and 20), with the Giro organisers tending towards finishes in the valley or just over the top of climbs this year.
In theory, that could mean that team strength plays a bigger role, as it’s less about just an all-out, one-on-one fight to the finish. In this respect, Ayuso looks stronger. Race leader Isaac del Toro, Adam Yates, Brandon McNulty and Jay Vine are all still up there on GC, and have looked a force to be reckoned with so far, compared to Roglič who has lost Jai Hindley, isn’t sure about the form of Dani Martínez, and is looking at Giulio Pellizarri as possibly his strongest mountain domestique.
However, what looks like UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s strength may indeed turn out to be its weakness. Ayuso was clearly hoping to take pink on Tuesday, and Isaac del Toro’s complicating time in the race lead, but the young Mexican held on to pink, and the more time he spends in that jersey, the more questions are going to be asked about whether he could actually be a GC leader.
Ayuso and UAE really can’t attack their own pink jersey, but the Spaniard faces a wait to see if and when Del Toro will crack, so he can step back into the leadership he expected to have at this race. It could be a real limiter for the team.
Whatever is still to come, the race so far – the season so far – has told us that Roglič and Ayuso are the strongest, and their paths are only getting closer as Roglič clawed back time on Tuesday, and Ayuso looks increasingly at risk of some intra-team destabilisation. But with all of their preferred discipline in the TTs completed, the event often known as the race of truth, it’s the rest of this race that is really going to reveal the truth. There’s nowhere left to hide, and still 10 tough stages to get through, with their competition close and ready to pounce.
The time trialling may be over, but the real battle in this Giro is only just beginning.
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