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Published on Saturday, 08 May 2021 18:04

Giro d'Italia St 2  

Stupinigi - Novara

Sunday 9th May, 179kms    

The Giro stays in Piemonte for a flat stage to Novara, and it looks like a perfect one for the sprinters to get off the mark on. It will be the first time we will see Dylan Groenewegen sprint since that terrible incident at the Tour of Poland. 

There's been more controversy this week with the Jakobsen/Groenewegen situation, with Jakobsen taking umbrage with Groenewegen revealing some of the details of their private meetup in an interview ahead of the Giro. Jakobsen has said that he has never received a formal apology from Groenewegen and that he has not shown willingness to take any responsibility for his actions. That should add an extra little bit of tension in the peloton ahead of the first sprint back for Dylan. 

Stage 1 Review

Wow, what a crazy stage that was. The Jumbo boys were absolutely flying, with Tobias Foss first taking the lead and then his team-mate Eduardo Affini pulled off an incredible ride to go 5" faster with an average speed of 57.6kmph! Remi Cavagna was disappointing though, not sure what happened there, 17" behind Ganna and down in 5th is a poor result. 

Great ride too by Jos Van Emden though to make up for the Cavagna loss, landing the 11/10 matchbet I added this morning, the info was spot on, he liked the course and the legs were good. 

What a ride by Joao Almeida though, to beat Cavagna and finish 2" ahead of Evenepoel was super impressive, a great start by him. He's already 20" ahead of Yates, Carthy and Bilbao and 21" ahead of Bernal and 32" ahead of Landa. It was a good TT by Evenepoel on his first ride back, bodes well for his chances.. Early days though. 

Incredibly disappointing from Bevin though, he finished way down in 65th, 44" back on Ganna and behind Tratnik and Dowsett, who he really should have been beating with the times they set. Maybe he hasn't recovered properly after pulling out sick at Romandie, and in hindsight, I maybe shouldn't have had so many bets riding on him, so sorry about that, I fucked up there. Oliveira had easily beat Sanchez too who had suffered a mechanical. 

But what about Ganna - he was poetry in motion.. absolutely roared around that course, cutting corners at ridiculous speed, sprinting out of the saddle out of corners and hammered it all the way to the line to record a speed not far off the fastest ever prologue speed. 58.7kmph for 8.3kms is astonishing. So I guess he's back to his best and whatever caused his drop-off in form recently has passed. 

The Route

Not a lot to say about the route, we'll see a few guys in the break go after the first KOM jersey (only one Cat 4 hill at the Montechiaro d'Asti) but other than that it's a pretty featureless (if beautiful) run north from Stupengi (south west of Turin) to Novara. The only other points of interest in the stage are that there are two intermediate sprints in quick succession after 138.5 and 152kms and they could well see the break pulled back early in order for the sprinters to contest them. 

The roads narrow as they head to Novara, which interestingly, two-time winner of the Giro Giuseppe Saronni hails from, interesting now as he is part of the UAE Team Emirates backroom team, they will probably be going all out for Fernando Gaviria. 

There's a sharp right around a roundabout with 4kms to go, then a long straight until 1.5kms to go, when they turn sharp right again and on to the run for home. There are a number of roundabouts to get through in the last kilometres, but in general it's pretty straight all the way to the finish, it will be a fast finish.

Contenders and Favourites

Caleb Ewan is the 2/1 favourite for the stage and facing the opposition here, you'd have to say it's the right price, given his record in Grand Tours - He has won a stage in every one of the six Grand Tours he's entered, and won two in the Giro of 2016. But he's also only finished 2 of the six he's entered, and it looks like it will be the same this year. 

Unusually for him, he's only won one race this year, the final stage in the UAE Tour, after finally getting the better of Sam Bennett. He's come close a number of other times of course, with two 2nd places (including an unlucky 2nd at MSR), and two 3rds. His most recent 3rd was a disappointing result in Valenciana, but not as disappointing as 6th in the final sprint, he never looked like winning. 

One of the issues that day though was that there were only 2 of his teammates left in the race, as 3 had already abandoned so he was without a decent leadout. He does have his main men Roger Kluge and Jasper de Buyst back with him here though and if they click, and deilver Ewan with 300m to go, he will go very close. One concern though is that de Buyst was one of his team-mates who had to abandon Valencia with back problems, will he be back to 100%? If not he could be down to just one leadout man. 

Dylan Groenewegen would be the 6/4 favourite for this I think (Ewan maybe 3/1) if this was a year ago before his incident, he's one of the fastest men in the peloton and great at surfing wheels and getting up in the nick of time. In the year before his crash, he had contested 5 sprints and had won 3, and finished 2nd and 4th in the other two. Then Poland happened and whether he'd have won or not is a moot question given what happened next, but he was definitely up there. 

I'm hearing he's in excellent shape though, he did some fantastic work behind a motor pacer last week and is putting out big numbers in training. He looked in great shape today in the TT, his legs look massive, he's obviously been working very hard while away.

He has David Dekker, Jos Van Emden, Paul Maartens, Eduardo Affini and Tobias Foss to lead him out, and we saw the power they were putting out today. Dekker will be key, in a poor-mans Morkov role, kicking for home with 1km to go to get Dylan in to position from about 500m to go and Dylan should fly home.

I backed him earlier this week when Betway opened their market at 6/1, they cut him to 5/1 and I went in again and they cut him to 7/2, so sorry about taking the price down, but I think it would have happened anyway, he was too big at 6/1. He's just 4/1 now with Unibet or 10/3 with Betway and 365, and the 4/1 is still worth taking, as is the 3/4 for him to top 3 it. Dekker is his last man (confirmed) and will release him early as I said, so taking on Dekker in his matchbet with Consonni could pay off at odds against, as I think Consonni will keep going to try to get a good result for himself. 

Tim Merlier is the same price as Groenewegen with some bookies and 7/2 second favourite with Unibet and he's sure to be close too. He showed himself to be one of the fastest men in the peloton this spring with some superb sprint wins, including back to back wins in Le Samyn and the GP Monsere and another win in the Koksijde Classic a few weeks later. But really, looking back at the fields, there wasn't a single decent sprinter in all three races for him to beat. 

When he came up against decent sprinters, in Tirreno, Scheldeprijs, Gent-Wevelgem and even half-decent sprinters in Etoile de Besseges, he didn't fare so well. And this is the Giro, the opening stage and the chaos that goes with it.. With an inexperienced and average leadout train, I think he'll struggle to win this one. He may not even be in the top 3. But it looks like the Belgians, or someone is backing him because he's pretty short now. 

Peter Sagan at 9/1 for a sprint stage? He's sure to finish on the podium, isn't he? He always manages to sneak in there.. He didn't start the year so well, was not on form in Tirreno, as he was just coming back after being struck down with Covid-19. But then, despite not being in the best of form he snuck in to 4th place in MSR, just off the podium. He landed his first win of the season then in Catalunya, but he only had the likes of Daryl Impey to beat, and in Romandie he finally started to show some form, wininng the first sprint ahead of Sonny Colbrelli.

He came close again on the hilly stage 3, showing some great legs to stay with the front group over the last two Cat 3 climbs, only for Marc Soler to skip away and take the stage, but also he was outsprinted by Magnus Cort. He is here to go for stages on the hillier days, and to try to pick up the Points jersey along the way, and he might just need a few days to ease himself in to a bit more race form, but he won't be far off. 

Fernando Gaviria had his issues with Covid last year too, contracting it twice, something that not a lot of people thought could happen.. Best result this year is a 3rd place behind WVA and Ewan in the opening stage of Tirreno. 5th was his best result in the 'home' race for UAE at the UAE Tour, behind Dekker, Ackers, Viv and Bennett, which would have disappointed him and the team, and the rest of the season to date has been pretty disappointing. 

His best result in the Giro last year was 7th place on stage 11, before abandoning on stage 15, but he has won a stage in the Giro in 2019 and 2017, as well as taking a stage of the Tour in 2018. He had 6 wins in 2020, but none in the World Tour, his win in Burgos came after a cheeky late attack as a crash disrupted the sprints of Demare and Bennett.. it wasn't really a sprint, but he held on. He will have to step up a level on recent form to feature but should be good enough for a top 6. 

Giacomo Nizzolo will be going all out to win as many stages as possible, given that he is supposed to be going home early, but this flat, fast finish on a flat stage isn't really his thing. He needs a hillier course to dispose of/tire some of the other sprinters, he will struggle for speed to beat Ewan, Groenewegen and Merlier. 

Matteo Moschetti took two wins in the Trofeo races at the start of 2020, but really struggled to even finish races from then on. He managed to take a 6th place on stage 4 of the Vuelta, but finished OTL on stage 7, it was an early end to the race for him. He has one win to his name this season, but it really was a poor field he was up against, I can't see him upping his level to challenge the top three guys here. 

Andrea Pasqualon, Andrea Vendrame, Max Kanter - they can fight for a top 10 placing but are unlikely to trouble the podium, and I really can't see the break, or even a late attack winning this. 

So it's a battle between the top 3 in the betting almost certainly, but we could see someone nick in there to take one of the places, and that's most likely to be Sagan or Viviani. Bit of a leap to take on Groenewegen in his first race back, but I think it will be the only chance we'll get to back him at a price like this in the race, he could be 6/4 or 2/1 next time. 

Recommendations:

1pt win on Dylan Groenewegen at 7/2 with Unibet

2pts on him to top 3 at 3/4

1pt on Peter Sagan to finish in the top 3 at 7/5 with Unibet

Matchbets

Merlier to beat Moschetti and Pasqualon to beat Albanese - 2pts at 0.7/1

Consonni to beat Dekker - 2pts at 11/8 with Bet365