The Prophet crushes fools on the way to the Tre Chime in the '68 Giro
This is the most exciting thing that’s happened in Cycling since April. Yes, that’s a full two weeks with nothing exciting happening and its been killing me. I know its been killing you, too.
I love the Giro, the master alchemist of bad weather and big mountains that keeps the racing exciting from the first day through the last. You can generally count on enough climbing in the first week to see the leadership bounce around like one of those singing ping pong balls on Sesame Street. The race has its fair share of provenance as well, with many a legendary battle fought between legendary riders.
This year’s race is also remarkable for the fact that a GC rider is not only racing both the Giro and the Tour, but for Contador’s publicly stated objective of doing the Giro-Tour double, a feat not matched since Pantani crushed it back in 1998. That is an awesome goal, I just wish it was a goal set forth by a rider I could get enthusiastic about. A quick scan of the start list has me wondering who is made of the same stuff Bertie, and I’m coming up short. Uran Uran and Pozzovivo are the standouts; and I have serious doubts about Porte being able to come up with the goods, not to mention my boy Ryder who, despite having actually won the Giro, does not inspire confidence in his ability to repeat the feat. It is looking like energy bars may be Contador’s biggest rival for the title, like in last year’s Tour.
Now that I’ve given you three paragraphs of useless drivel that you’ve probably already skipped over, I feel comfortable getting down to Road Tacks. This is the Giro, people, lots of points at stake. And those points are going towards amazing prizes including a Jaeger frame and a Café Roubaix wheelset. There is plenty of time for you to Delgado the thing, too, so my advice is that you avoid doing that. Give yourself enough time to enter your picks so if something has gone amuck, you have time to hit “reload” or come back V minutes later to try again before the event closes. Remember, your procrastination in this matter will not result in the only Keeper with database skills diving into the backend to enter your picks for you. (And if you do encounter a problem, please be so kind as to take a screenshot and upload it as the descriptor “it didn’t work” doesn’t help us debug the problem.)
The scoring for the Grand Tours is a tad more involved than the one-day races, so look them over before making your prognostications. (One of the best things about the VSP is that I usually get to use the word “prognostication”, an opportunity one should always relish.)
So get your picks in before the countdown clock goes to zero, hit the go button, and good luck.
[vsp_results id=”32941″/]
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Fabowser's miraculous recovery really screwed my VSP today. Chapeau to him but here's hoping for another place swap between he and Landa on the Sistriere tomorrow. Either way stage 20 should be fun to watch. I expect another big ride from Ryder to hopefully shoot him up into the top 5, he's really animated the last week of this Giro and made things exciting in the absence of any real drama about who's going to win.
Fucking Italians - just when you thought they organised (italians organising ?!?) a fairly normal giro I discovered that stage 20 contains the Cima Coppi . The second half of the climb is 8 km long , 9 % graded gravel road to almost 2200 m above sea level . Thats why I love this race .
@rockkk
+1
@frank
And his white jersey only partly makes up for what must be one of the most perfectly ugly, if not ugliest, team kit.
Monster last week from Hesjedal
Even spotted him deploying the dangle at one point!
Astana with 4 in the top 10 on the stage. That's some team or............
Top race, top racers, Froome will be shitting himself, Contador can do it all on his own if need be, Aru had a frankly unbelievable team and could only manage a distant second, Nibili must be licking his lips at the chance to go on "training camp" with these guy's before ripping shit up at the Tour, might make it worth watching after all...
@piwakawaka
This was a great Giro; Astana really are shockingly good - showing all the signs that we've historically known to be the signs of team-wide doping. That said, Aru's attack on Hesjedal on Friday was probably the best moment of the race, in the big dog and just crushing it until one of them breaks.
Bertie is not as hateful as he used to be, and perhaps the best thing about him this year is that he rode in "almost" team-issue bibs.
The results are finalized now, and the points added into the VSP GC. @xyxax takes a one-point lead over @dancollins.
Standing below:
[vsp_gc year="2015"/]
Still clinging onto third place. There were a couple of days I had the overall VSP lead when Aru dropped to third & had it stayed that way I would've had a 3 point gap. Wasn't to be & there's still a long way to go so just need to stay in contention.