Giro d'Italia 2014: Stage 9 preview
The first mountains shook the GC tree, and the ripe fruit like Matthews fell out. Fortunately, there was another Australian not far behind him. Cadel Evans takes the lead in the Giro d’Italia for the 2nd time in his career. We’ve got another summit finish today (although not as hard as yesterday), which will contribute further. Evans is a minute up on GC already, and as his team is arguably better at climbing than his Tour winning team (Michael Schar in particular) he’s very much in the driving seat.
Of course, it’s the riders that make the race, and it’s the riders that make the race hard. They set off from Lugo, nearly 2 hour’s drive from yesterday’s finish, the birthplace of Charles Ponzi, who invented the Ponzi scheme. But which rider is going to lure other riders in with promises of huge returns on their investments, only to run off their money? We don’t know. What they do when they retire is up to them.
Charles Ponzi. Always so well turned out!Â
We have three climbs - the 3rd cat Sant Antonio 48km from the line, the 4th cat Rochetta Sandri with 23km to go, and the final climb to Sestola starting 7km after that. There’s not much respite between the two; the riders descend 70m over that distance, so that makes any early attacks perhaps less likely to succeed. There’s a northwesterly wind forecast, plus a 30% chance of rain in the early part of the afternoon, and the temperatures a balmy 10 degrees - back to long sleeves again, one would imagine.
Monte Cimone, where the commune of Sestola sits. No-one was allowed to climb it during the Cold War.
 If we go off today (the GC riders sticking together until 3km to go) the final 3.9% gradient favours one of the more powerful climbers over the really lightweight ones like Pozzovivo. Of those, Ulissi is clearly the man to beat. However, before that, there’s a half decent length 8.7% ramp (kicks up to 13% too), so could be just the thing for Pozzovivo to get away on.
Total Altitude gained: 1909m
3rd cat Sant Antonio. 3.8% average over 13.2km
4th cat Rochetta Sandri. 3.6% average over 8km
2nd cat Sestola. 5.5% average over 16.4kmÂ
