More: 2013 Giro d'Italia

The the 3 weeks of the 2013 Giro d'Italia will look like this:
- 7 stages with sprint finishes,
- 5 stages over mid-height mountains,
- 5 stages over high mountains,
- 2 individual time trials; one an uphill TT; the two TTs total 92.4 km
- 1 team time trial; 17.4 km

The start will be in Naples on May 4 and finish in Brescia on May 26 having covered a distance of 3,405.3 km. It will leave Italy only once with a stage in France, stage 15, for the Col du Galibier, one of the classic climbs of the Tour de France.

The Giro will touch every region in the south of Italy except for Sicily, with a route from Naples to Basilicata and Calabria before heading back along the spine of the Adriatic coast through Puglia, Molise and Abruzzo. Then comes a 55.5 km individual time trial to Saltara (stage 8), the course where current Italian national team cycling coach Paolo Bettini became the Italian road race champion and where the time trial specialists could try to pull out a big enough gap to survive the final week of the Giro in the hope of staying in the pink jersey all the way to Brescia.

The Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Three Peaks of Lavaredo), stage 20, will be back and will be the penultimate stage of the 2013 Giro d'Italia, on Saturday May 25; they were first included in the Giro in 1967 and last included in 2007. The day before, stage 19, will feature a stage that includes the Gavia and the Stelvio.

The finishing stage in Brescia will be for the sprinters, a departure from recent editions. Recent winners in Brescia have been Cipollini (2002), Bettini (2006), and Greipel (2010).

New stages for the Giro will include the individual time trial up to Polsa (stage 18) as well as the team time trial in Forio di Ischia (stage 2), where in 1959, an individual time trial was held (it had been anticipated of that the winner of that stage would be Jacques Anquetil but the surprise winner was Antonino Catalano (Bianchi-Pirelli team) from Palermo, Sicily). There are other innovations, such as the start in Busseto to honor Giuseppe Verdi, and the San Sepolcro-Firenze stage 8 to honor Gino Bartali .

The stages, in English, and using a five star rating with 5 stars being the most difficult:

1st stage - 4 May NAPLES - NAPLES 156 km  *

2nd stage - 5 May ISCHIA - FORIO (team time trial) 17.4 km ***

3rd stage - 6 May SORRENTO - MARINA DI ASCEA 212 km ***

4th stage - 7 May POLICASTRO BUSSENTINO - SERRA SAN BRUNO 244 km ***

5th stage - 8 May COSENZA - MATERA 199 km **

6th stage - 9 May MOLA DI BARI - MARGHERITA DI SAVOIA 154 km *

7th stage - 10 May SAN SALVO - PESCARA 162 km ***

8th stage - 11 May GABICCE MARE - SALTARA (individual time trial) 55.5 km ****

9th stage - 12 May SANSEPOLCRO - FLORENCE 181 km ***

                  13 May Rest Day

10th stage - 14 May CORDENONS - ALTOPIANO DEL MONTASIO 167 km ****

11th stage - 15 May TARVISIO (Cave del Predil) - VAJONT 1963/2013 (Erto and Casso) 184 km **

12th stage - 16 May LONGARONE - TREVISO 127 km *

13th stage - 17 May BUSSETO - CHERASCO 242 km **

14th stage - 18 May CERVERE - BARDONECCHIA 156 km ****

15th stage - 19 May CESANA TORINESE - COL DU GALIBIER (Valloire) 150 km *****

                   20 May Rest Day

16th stage - 21 May VALLOIRE - IVREA 237 km **

17th stage - 22 May CARAVAGGIO - VICENZA 203 km *

18th stage - 23 May MORI - POLSA (individual time trial) 19.4 km ****

19th stage - 24 May PONTE DI LEGNO - VAL MARTELLO/MARTELLTAL 138 km *****

20th stage - 25 May SILANDRO/SCHLANDERS - TRE CIME DI LAVAREDO (      Auronzo di      Cadore) 202 km *****

21st stage - 26 May RIESE PIO X - BRESCIA 199 km *

At a glance:

Rider comments tomorrow...

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondos, touring, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, racing, etc. are always welcome.

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Tre Cime di Lavaredo: The Greatest Show on Earth

Guest contributor Rich, who was on a tour with CycleItalia, continues his storytelling about the Legendary Climbs Tour.

Tre Cime di Lavaredo: The Greatest Show on Earth

In the 1970’s there were two feature films made by the Danish filmmaker Jorgen Leth about the Giro d’ Italia. “Stars and Watercarriers’ was the first, an account of the 1973 Giro. The lesser known film, about the 1974 Giro, is called ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’. This movie is short (only 75 minutes) and has fewer of the rather clumsy titles, cutaways and overly dramatic and oddly translated narration of the first movie. It also has lots of music to replace the dialogue, from a Verdi aria during a feature on Vincenzo Torriani, Lord and Master of the Giro, to a disco version of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ during a hot dusty stage.

“The Greatest Show” has a 10 minute segment near the end of the movie that features the dramatic climb of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, which was the mountain top finish of the next to last stage of the race. Jose Fuente, who had been wearing the maglia rosa until he was dropped on the stage into San Remo and lost huge time, set out to prove he was the King of the Mountains and perhaps get back some of his GC losses.

In the movie, it is a cloudy and cool day and it gets cold on the way up the climb. Since it is late May there is still snow beside the road (there could be some in July too, as I learned), but the cold day has not stopped the tifosi, who are blanketing the roadside in huge, and widely enthusiastic, numbers.

At the steepest part, as we watch a few members of the grupetto struggling to stay upright and wondering what possessed them to become pro cyclists, the narrator speaks in a dry and emotion free voice the words that were running through my brain as I came past this point of the climb:

“The gradient is one in six. The temperature is minus two degrees (C). Three more miles to the top”

Well, it wasn’t minus two degrees C, it was more like 65 degrees F. But the gradient was in fact one in six (17%!) at least for a minute on my bike computer. And yes, there were three miles to the top.

The second day of our trip began by climbing the Passo Furcia, and after a break at the top to refuel we descended and continued through some rolling country to our lunch stop, where we were presented with two options. We could either ride to the hotel in Cortina, a 40 km jaunt with only one little climb and a long descent with a fair amount of traffic, or we could take on the Tre Cime climb, a mere 20 km but which would take much longer than the 40 km option and meant we would have to shuttle down from the top to reach the hotel in time to clean up and recover before dinner. Only John and I opted for the climb. John had done this tour the year before (a satisfied CycleItalia customer!) but had skipped the Tre Cime and wanted to do it this time. And this very climb was one of the reasons I came to Italy so I certainly wanted to give it a try.

I knew the climb was steep, but I hadn’t really studied it that closely. Looking at the profile below, I calculate the last 4 km average 11.9%. That is a pretty steep climb to finish off a day of 7300 feet of climbing in only 42 miles of riding. I think I flew up those last 4 km at about 6-8 km/hr. I was down in my 34x32 and thinking I should have brought even lower gears. But the scenery was incredible. I was trying to make it to the top without stopping, but after I passed our tour van which was parked at the steepest point, I came to my senses and paused ‘to admire the majesty of the Dolomites’. Exhaustion had nothing to do with it. From my perch one switchback above I could still hear our tour leader Larry calling ‘Forza!’ to riders going by and listen to ‘Nessum Dorma’ blaring from the van’s speakers. I was hoping that the Mozart Requiem wouldn’t be next.

Tre Cime di Lavaredo: The Greatest Show on Earth

As the refugio at the summit finally came into sight, I put on a burst of effort and reached the parking lot at the top, where I was met by a mass of busses and cars and motorcycles along with a few other cyclists. The Tre Cime Road is a dead end at a spot with one of the most beautiful views there is, and I asked a Dutch cyclist who had also made it up to take my picture. He obliged:


My riding partner John arrived at the summit a few minutes later, and we gawked at the view and took a few pictures and enjoyed a coffee before packing into the van for the shuttle to the hotel in Cortina. Since the other guests who had opted for the longer route with much less climbing would be arriving at the hotel soon, riding our bikes to Cortina really wasn’t an option, and when I saw the late afternoon traffic on the descent into town I was glad I was in the van. I thought this would be the steepest climb of the trip, but I was wrong, that honor was reserved for the Mortirolo. But this one was special too. I watched Merckx and Gimondi and Fuente and company climb this mountain in the movie, and now I had ridden up the same road. Just another ordinary day on the Legendary Climbs Tour.

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Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal about rides, granfondos, touring, having a good time cycling in Italy, Italian cycling history, etc. are always welcome. Contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 2,000 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog. There is also a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page.