Velominati Super Prestige: Giro d’Italia 2012
After a winter of long training rides that offered more in the way of numb extremities than it did in acute enjoyment, I have to say that the warming of the air and brightening of the skies have served to remind me that while I love riding in bad weather, I certainly don’t have anything against riding when its nice out.
But dont think for a minute that this quells my desire to watch the Pros battle the elements as well as each other and, quite frankly, after a Spring Classics campaign that gave us only fleeting tastes of Rule #9 Glory, I welcome the arrival of the 2012 Giro d’Italia which holds the distinction of being held in the worst weather and over the worst roads. Come July, I’ll get just as wound up as anyone about the biggest racing spectacle of the year, but in my heart, the Giro d’Italia is the best Grand Tour of the three.
All that said, I’m a little disappointed to see that the Giro starts in Denmark. Not that I have anything against Denmark – lovely place – it’s just that this choice takes us away from the classical Giro opening week involving a mountaintop finish or two and gives us a Tour de France-style opening week of flat stages and crosswinds. We’ll have to wait almost two weeks before we start seeing the riders cross the highest passes and hitting the uphill finishes, though the final week does appear to set us up for considerable fireworks as the second-last stage will see the riders cross the Mortirolo and finish atop the Stelvio.
What does this mean for the VSP? Quite a bit, actually. Bearing in mind the changes we’ve made to the Rest-Day picks from the years past, it means that as the race settles out, those who have made changes to their lineup on the first rest day will not have the opportunity to do so again on the second rest day. And, those who wait for the second day will see steep penalties tallying up against their totals. But on the line is a Symbol Pack, the chance to post for the rest of year with the Maglia Rosa VSP Badge and, of course, the grand prize of the personalized Shop Apron. Check the start list and with any divine beings that you might be able to influence, and then get your picks in by the time the countdown timer goes to zero at 5am Pacific on the 5th May.
For reference, please review the new Grand Tour scoring and penalty guidelines. Also note that since these new rules required new coding and this represents the first Grand Tour, there is always the chance that there are defects in the code. Watch your picks and your points as we move through the event and alert us of any anomalies. If your points seem wrong, use the dispute function to alert us of the matter; complaints in the posts feed to this effect will be ignored. Finally, don’t leave anything to the last minute so we have time to fix any problems before its too late. Good luck.
Scoring:
Readers who wish to enter shall enter their predictions for the top five placings on General Classification of each Grand Tour by 5am on the day of the first stage or prologue.
Points
Points will be scored as follows: 20 points for first place, 15 for second, 10 for third, 7 for fourth, and 5 for fifth; plus 3 points per rider in the top five regardless of the rider’s placing, but riders are not scored twice.
Changing of the Picks*
Contestants are allowed to make line up changes on one of the rest days of the Grand Tours but not both. These changes will come with a point penalty. You will be allotted one (1) rest day to make swaps in grand tours. You pick either the first or second rest day. The penalties for swapping will be lower for the first rest day than the second. This will allow you to swap out a rider(s) who gets caught in some first week nervousness with a 5 point penalty for each swap. Or make some go for broke/doomed to fail break-away swap on the second rest day for a 10 point penalty per swap. You make one swap or five on either rest day for the corresponding 5 or 10 point penalty per swap.
Additionally, if one of your riders crashes out, DNF’s, or DNS’s, you may swap them out on a rest day with corresponding penalties if you haven’t already used up your one rest day swap. The only exception to this is riders who are booted from a race for a positive test; if your rider is on the juice and gets chucked off the race, you get a free swap of that rider within 24 hours of the disqualification.
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@Harminator
From the live coverage on cyclingnews.com, they said the average was 34.421 kph. This was with about 50Km left to go.
@niksch
Oh OK. I was thinking about bike speed on the last climb. Don’t know why we never get live speed stats. Just occasionally.
@Harminator
Wish I’d thought to say that, especially since “Get away from me, witch!” “I’m not a witch; I’m your wife.” gets a lot of play in our house.
@frank
This might sound heretical, but I’m not a huge Ryder fan. Happy for the guy–and this actually means my sabbatical has been extended. But I just can’t see him hanging in pink through the rest of this race.
So the California race isn’t testing anyone and declaring it publicly. Maybe it is the best way to build for le Tour…
Who’s the Man today? He so tough he hangs out with wolves!
@Gianni
Damn rights he is!
Real happy for Ryder. Funny thing, until recently whenever I spoke about Ryder Hesjedal my girlfriend thought that I was referring to “Cyclist” Hesjedal instead of his name. She never said anything, but always wondered why I talked about other pros without identifying them as riders beforehand.
@ramenvelo
When I mentioned who had won the stage, the answer I got was ” ins’t he a character from Lord of the Rings”…….
@Steampunk
Better living through chemistry.
I think we need to discuss podium leg accoutrements. Throw on leg warmers to keep the guns warm, unless mid-summer and well hot? Pull on leg warmers to hide the guns & their awesomeness in order to prevent all the photographers lenses from shattering?
Leave the shoes on in order to declare, “Damn right, I just won a bike race!” Or, change to some non-cyclo shoes.
We’ve seen a lot of variety up there. Them seem to know how to do it in the Euro cyclocross races.
I too wish I liked to hang out with wolves. First Canadian maglia? THAT is awesome.
F#*@+ me! I just thought of an old password we used on a patrol!
Challenge:
“It is a dark night for old men and priests.”
Reply:
“Yes, but the wolves like it fine.”
Go Wolfman Hesjedal!
You guys don’t hang out with wolves? Weird.
Pozzovivo makes his case! Was a bit worried about chosing him after the TTT but it looks like he will be a factor afterall!
@Steampunk
I thought similar when i saw him on the floor. Then I thought his socks were too long.
@motor city
+1
Nieve’s hanging in there, too. Liquigas have been looking strong””stronger than I anticipated, actually. They’ve done a nice job of putting together an exceptionally strong team for Basso; I can only hope Nibali will receive equally strong service in July.
All the more exciting is that we haven’t discovered that one or two of the real contenders lack real form. By this point in last year’s Tour, Wiggins and Van den Broeck were out and a couple of others looked winded and beaten. There about ten guys who could still win this.
Sounds like the boys might be in for a Rule #9 kind of day if Cav’s twitter feed is to be believed
The sprint stages have been enough of a scramble so far without throwing wet roads in to the mix…
Well, no Canadian teams left in the NHL playoffs…at least Hope of a Nation is in pink!
Ha, I too found shot of Tiralongo on the ground alarming. “Oooh, wow, what a finish! Wait, who is that on the ground like that?!”
Crash-fest continues. Cav and Goss down. Man, is it me or are they crashing way more than they used to?
That last corner was a bit on the tight side, I reckon you’d have trouble getting a Sunday club ride through there cleanly, let alone 200 pros in a hurry! Unfortunately the only shot they showed had the crash already happening as they came into shot, so no idea what caused it – someone losing it on the brakes maybe?
Pozzato caused it. I had hoped he might win but that just shows how little I know of him, a couple of articles. I was impressed by his determination to make the Classics after a double collar bone fracture within a few weeks of them. Today though, seeing his half hearted attack followed by him getting pissed at those around him not helping, my estimation of him has tumbled. He ran Goss off the road and denied us all the chance to see Goss vs Cavendish, which we must’ve all been anticipating.
I guess riding in front of a home crowd got to him.
@Fausto If you have a look at the still shot shown underneath the video highlights here Pippo has lost his back wheel already before Goss (just coming in to the shot on the left) starts to turn in across him. Pretty sure as Goss began to turn Pippo would have just t-boned him.
@Ron
They should start by ditching the damn baseball caps for proper cycling caps.
@snoov
Pippo put in a half hearted attack and get pissed no one helped him? Sounds like Schleck tactics. Can’t believe he t-boned our man Gossy, farkin Italians.
Cavendish recently tweeted about the “respect” that the Tifosi hold for the rainbow bands. Wonder if this is what he meant…
@Marcus
Haha, awesome!
Potato has pulled out this morning – scafoid fracture
@Marcus
Awesome clip! Too cool.
@Daccordi Rider
Not a big Pippo fan (too flash, too little results), but he did cause the crash. I think this gets to the heart of what Cav was saying about giving sprinters respect. That was a stage finish for pure sprinters and Pippo had no business trying to mix it up with Goss, Cav et al. That’s two stages Cav could have won or scored big in the points classification, but was taken out by Italians who were where they shouldn’t have been. I understand they’re Italians and it’s the Giro, but if you don’t have the sense to know where you should be making a big effort, sit the fuck up and finish in the bunch. Pippo’s going home and he only has himself to blame.
No spoiler… fantastic finish today… boy those Italian commentators can speak fast.
Pick it up from about 11-12kms to go if you can.
@ChrisO
No spoilers here either but the live updates had me on the edge of my seat. I will HAVE to find the vid and watch it from at least 5.5 k out, if not 12 k’s to go.
It’s not that anything decisive happens that far out, but as the peloton picks up the break the speed they are moving at is quite awesome and you get a really good sense of it, with riders jostling.
The Italian TV picked up and slow-mo’d a few incidents with riders doing some heavy leaning on each other. Their coverage is far better than the French rubbish.
@ChrisO
Found the final 1 km on video and it is just so amazing to see them moving so fast, up such an incline, winding through the old city. Just pure class.
Also an interesting side conversation would be what everyone thinks about time bonuses? Maybe Frahnk has already written a piece about them but I do not remember seeing one. I really LOVE them. Makes each individual stage finish sooo much more exciting.
@Buck Rogers
Agreed – and I love hearing Sean Kelly talk about “bonifications”. Makes it sound like something Catholic and religious.
It makes the GC riders stay alert right to the end, not just coast in at the back of the main bunch, or at least send someone up to make sure their rivals don’t get bonified.
@wiscot
Pippo goes up and down in my books. As you said, too much flash, but he does look good on a bike. There are few smoother riders in the peloton when he’s in form. The man’s pretty fast, though. He had every right to be where he was. Crashes happen, and it looks as though Goss had misjudged the turn before Pippo ran into the back of him. There seems to be a fair amount of Anglophilia in the English cycling media (not hugely surprising), but if Goss had run into the back of Pippo, it would have been Pippo’s line that was at fault…
@Marcus
Why was the team car at the (I am guessing) back? Where/when was this?
This is how you do a race leader’s bike:
@DerHoggz
No, THIS is how you do a race leader’s bike.
For the Schleck ‘fans’, GOLD!
@Tartan1749
Perfect! Esp with Frank’s results today. Too funny.
@frank
Correction: Team leader.
@Tartan1749
Hahaha, funny shit. Especially this bit:
@mcsqueak
+1 That is priceless!
The Keepers Tour attendees should also get a laugh from:
“I promised Jesse that we’d watch Flight of the Conchords together. He’s my new room-mate. His voice makes me laugh.”
@Steampunk
Race leader, team leader, just LEADER. Yates didn’t need no stinkin’ yellow highlights and no stinkin’ yellow bar tape, did he?
As much as the Tour of California is in my highly valued and ultra-important opinion (that’s what IMHO means, right? because that’s how whatever precedes the acronym usually sounds), an inferior race to the Giro and most other continental events, they are setting the bar on what race coverage should look like. Beautifully done interface, iphone and ipad apps that stream the live video feed (even to the airplane over my ipad yesterday) and – wait for it, wait for it – IT IS FREE.
I am increasingly peeved with the feeds I find through SteepHill because of the ads and all that garbage (SOMEONE MADE A STINKY cutting across the commentary is really not pleasant) and how hard it is to find. We should all be able to go to ilgiro.com, letour.com, parisroubaix.com, etc and watch the race live with video, commentary, a text update with details overlooked by the commentary team, break data, time gaps, route profiles, overall standings, et el.
This is beautiful. If only the race wasn’t a training event.
@motor city
Love the product placement too. “Likely cause of death? Esta The.”
On a side note, have any of you non-Italians tasted this shit? I mean, I’m a big fan of the Italian palate, but this stuff is sticky sweet and comes in all sorts of weird flavors. But incomprehensibly it’s super popular in Italy.
Go figure
@frank
No doubt. BTW, why are you stinking up the Giro thread with AToC ephemera?
@sgt
Have you had Italian beer? proof that not everything Italian is good. but to your question, no I never had it since im not an ice tea fan to begin with.
@sgt
Because I assume the Giro organizers are reading this and will build out a similar service for next year.
@RedRanger
Some Italian hoppy beverages are fine after a hard day out on the bike – did much experimentation on this last year. However some Italian taste is undeniably suspect cf Italian Popular Music; current Lancia cars and Politicians Who Also Run TV Stations.
Whilst I’m at it the Giro is going right past the place we stayed in last summer – happy days.
@frank
You keep telling yourself that.
@RedRanger
Full disclosure. I’m not a drinkin’ man (any more), so no. I’ve figured out that l’acqua gassata is so cheap in Italia, I rarely drink anything but that or cafe when I’m in country.
@frank
Try out the RAI iPhone or iPad apps. Rave review here (scroll down).