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Published on Monday, 03 May 2021 22:12

Giro d'Italia St 21

Senago - Milano

Sunday 30th May, 30.3kms ITT

Similar to last year, the final TT is a flat run to Milan, but it's almost twice the distance of the final TT in 2020, at 30.3kms. After his demolition job in the opening TT, can Pippo Ganna top and tail the Giro with stage wins and win the final TT for the second year running? 

There are lots of twists and turns along the way, but also lots of opportunities for the strong men to put the power down with barely a turn in the final 10kms. What they will have to be alert to though are the multitudes of street furniture obstacles, such as roundabouts, traffic islands, tramway tracks etc. It's only in the last few hundred metres that the road starts to narrow and they turn sharp right, left and right again before the final 200m run to the finish line on pavé. 

We had a sensational opening TT, with the two Jumbo men setting incredible times and 75/1 shot Affini looking for a while like he might have done enough to win it. He had easily disposed of 2nd favourite Cavagna and topped his team-mate Tobias Foss by 3". But then Ganna came along and put out enough watts to power a city and won by 10". 

Foss and Affini had pulled off incredible rides, both averaging over 57kmph for the 8.3kms of the flat course.. How will they fare over a course that's almost 4 times the distance? The Giro has seen the lead change hands three times in the last nine years in the final TT, with Hesjedal (2012), Dumoulin (2017) and Geoghen Hart (2020) taking the win on the very last day. 

Stage 20 Review

Fair play to Bardet and Caruso and their team-mates for taking the stage on like they did, it was DSM and Bahrain who did what we expected Almeida and Yates to do, attacking with 55kms to go. It was a brilliant stage win for Caruso to cap a monumental race for him, sealing 2nd place in the GC. It was also a monumental day for Ineos, they controlled the race almost the entire last 50kms, going through their men one-by-one until only Martinez was left - but what a ride by him to not only control Yates and Almeida, but to break every single one of their GC rivals. 

Yates and Almeida were disappointing given how they rode yesterday, maybe the last few stages has taken a lot out of them, Vlasov dug in again but Carthy struggled again. We had Grosschartner giving it a real good go for us in the break, and he almost got a second bite at the cherry when the Caruso/Bardet group caught them, but he couldn't hold on to them after giving it his all all day. Dan Martin disappeared from the front group when Martinez started shredding it, and came home in 14th, 33" behind Bouwman who rode really well again. 

The matchbets summed up my Giro, never expeced Caruso to do that today and blew the treble, and Covi finishes ONE place behind Mollema in a group 13'42" down. Bouchard sealed the KOM jersey, Sagan the points and Ineos have taken the team prize, the in-play bet on them a week or so ago covers the losses on Trek and DQS. If Ladbrokes didn't cancel your bets on Trek at 4/1 and instead gave you odds of 5/4 like they tried with me, appeal to them and get them to cancel them, as they did for me. 

The Route

Starting in Senago, north of Milan, the road twists and turns with sections that head west, south, east, south, east until the second time check at Sesto San Giovanni after 19.7kms where it then turns south for the remaining 10.6kms to Milan. There are 3 or 4 tight turns inside the last kilometre, but otherwise the course is straight, flat, and the only obstacles could be the street furniture and bad road surfaces of Milan. 

Contenders

You have to start with Filippo Ganna after what he did here last year and what he did in the opening TT. 58.75kmph for 8.3kms is just incredible, a motorbike would have been hard-pressed to keep up with that sort of pace through the streets of Turin. He passed the first intermediate at an average of 57.24kmph to post the fastest split time and just kept the high pace all the way to the line, blitzing through some corners like he was on rails. 

Twelve months before this, Ganna also destroyed the opposition in Milan, beating Campanaerts and Dennis by 32", with Almeida 9" further back. That day he averaged 54.56kmph for 15.7kms, if he keeps that sort of pace this year, he could win by an even bigger margin.

But what are his legs like? Well they have been phenomenal in this Giro - it feels like he has been riding at the front of the peloton for hundreds of kilometres, powering along, putting lots of guys in the red. He even took to chasing down breakaway attempts at times, laughing at their feeble attempts to get away, with him just sitting there on their wheels. 

He has been a huge part of Bernal's victory in this Giro and still, he probably has enough in reserve to go and win this TT too, he pulled off early enough today after not really doing a whole lot as other teams were happy to do the pulling. Last year he had to put in a similar level of effort for Tao late on in the race, but he wasn't tasked with patrolling at the front of the peloton from the start like this year, as DQS were doing that for Almeida up until stage 18 and it wasn't looking like Tao was going to be a GC challenger. He even was given the freedom to go in the break on stage 5 after Thomas crashed out on stage 3, and went on to win the stage. 

So I think he will have slightly less in the tank than last year, as this Giro has been brutal for him, riding at the front from more or less the second stage, with some really horrible days in the cold and rain along the way. But it's been brutal for all the riders, it's been a very hard Giro. 

The last time he did a TT of this distance was also in the Giro last October, on stage 14, when he won the 34.1km TT to Valdobbiadene by 26" to his team-mate Dennis and 1'09" to McNulty in 3rd. I think we could see similar gaps of over a minute to the 3rd or 4th riders in this too and several minutes to some GC contenders. Almeida lost 1'31" to him last year, Campanaerts 2'06". 

Before that he also won the World's TT championship over 31.7kms in Imola, beating WVA by 26" and Kung by 29". Remi Cavagna was 48" behind him that day, with Campanaerts 52" down. And before that he won the Italian TT champs over 38.8kms, beating Affini by 1'31". So it seems his sweet spot is around the 30-35km mark, which doesn't bode well for his rivals here again. He should win it, the question is, by how much.. 

His nearest challenger is probably going to be Remi Cavagna, who was supposed to be his biggest danger in the opening TT. But Cavagna had a really bad day and only ended up in 5th place, 18" behind Ganna, nearly 2kms an hour slower than him, an incredible difference. Cavagna really had a Giro to forget after that, with Evenepoel and Almeida falling out of GC contention, they were left a little directionless. 

He did try to get in the break, like I hoped he would, on stage 15, but the crash at the start saw his chances thwarted, and he didn't try again after it restarted, or at least didn't succeed. He did succeed in getting in the winning break on stage 18, and we came very close to a nice winner, but he blew up after leading by 25" with just 11kms or so to go, the hill killed him, and unluckily he had an on-fire Bettiol coming after him.. I don't think anyone else would have caught and cracked him.

He had come in to this Giro in great TT'ing form of course, with two 2nds and win in the other three TTs he did this year. But it just didn't click for him on the day, he was behind by 7" at the first intermediate, and it just kept slipping away from him. 

In the Vuelta TT on stage 13 last year over 33.7kms he finished 8th, but that was the TT with the climb at the end that Primoz won, with the likes of Carthy and Carapaz finishing ahead of him. He was 6th at the second time check on the flat part, but Primoz took 52" out of him between T2 and the finish, which had 8kms of flat and only 2kms of climbing. 

In the TT to LPDBF in the Tour he had a similar performance, finishing 6th, 2 mins behind Pogacar. At the T2 point though, with just over 30kms of flat roads done, he was in 3rd place, just 17" behind Dumoulin and Pogacar, with Roglic 20" behind him and Caruso 32" further back in 5th. So he's good, but not great over the 35km sort of distance, Dumoulin and Pogacar both beating him by 17" and you'd think Ganna would easily have taken those two guys. 

He's not been put to work though like Ganna has, and he was not happy at all about how stage 1 went, he will be fired up for this one after the disappointing race DQS have had. 

What about the two Jumbo guys? Well Foss was definitely under the radar for many coming in to the first TT, but he's been superb in this Giro from start to finish, taking 3rd in the opening TT and occupying 9th place as they go in to this TT. With Martin almost 4 minutes behind him in the GC he can ride his TT without any pressure and just concentrate on posting his best time possible. 

He had shown what he is capable of though in the TT in Itzulia, when the Jumbo boys finished 1, 3 and 4 on the day, with Foss following Roglic, McNulty and Vingegaard home, 24" down.  In his last TT over this sort of distance, the Norwegian TT champs in 2020, he finished runner-up to Leknessund of Uno-X, who beat him by 15". There isn't much else to go on in his palmares to suggest he'll be winning this though, his most recent TT performances are by far and away his best TT results.

The Cervelo obviously helps, they seem to be very fast, but also the programme at JV seems to be high quality when it comes to TTs, and they are always working on ways of improving riders. It all depends though on how his body responds after three weeks of hard and stressful racing, we've seen guys collapse in final TTs.

Eduardo Affini was sensational in the opening TT, taking over from his team-mate Foss in the hot seat and holding the lead until Ganna came and blew him away. And we saw another demonstration of his power in the sprint of stage 13 when he launched off the front entering the home straight and almost held off the sprinters. He put out something like 800w average for 30" which is massive, but this is a different matter entirely, 30kms more in fact.   

His results in longer TTs aren't great though, last year he finished 3rd behind Ganna in the Italian Nationals, but he was 1'31" behind him, and even Alessandro De Marchi beat him by 41", not a great performance really. And in the Euros over 25.6 pretty flat kilometres he only finished 5th, even Alex Dowsett beat him. He was a minute behind Cavagna and 1'15" behind the winner, Stefan Kung. Not good enough for me to win this, or maybe even podium I think, I'm not sure the Cervelo is that much better than the Scotts.

Joao Almeida is in 8th place, but with just 1'02" between him and Bardet in 5th place he'll be looking to move up in the GC with his strong time trial ability. He did a super TT in the opening stage, finishing 4th, ahead of Cavagna and just 17" off the podium. His Giro started well but he had a disaster on stage 4 when he lost over 4 minutes, and stupid team orders also cost him time as he was asked to wait for Evenpoel on the two gravel stages. But he had bounced back and shown he had good legs in stages 17 and 19, but faded at the end of today's stage. Can he finish on a high? 

Max Walscheid tried several times to get away Friday, going off the front a number of times with team-mates trying to make the break. 8th in the opening TT with the same time as Evenepoel, 7th in the UAE Tour flat TT over 13kms, he won't be far off but hard to see him pushing for podium. 

Alberto Bettiol is in superb form this week, towing EF and Carthy up the climbs and then going out and winning that stage on Thursday with a blistering last 15kms. When interviewed afterwards it was put to him that it was going to be tough to catch Cavagna "one of the best time triallists in the world" to which he replied "well I'm one of the best time triallists in the world too!" And he was right to make that claim, he isn't bad at a TT at all. 12th in the opening TT, just 8" slower than Cavagna and 26" behind Ganna. 

Before that he finished 6th in the Tirreno TT over 10kms, 18" behind Wout and ahead of Almeida, Asgreen, Hepburn and Affini and was 7th in the Etoile TT over 10kms, but 35" behind Ganna. He won that TT in 2020, but didn't have much opposition, his other TTs last year were pretty average. And in the last TT around this distance, in stage 13 of the Tour 2019 he finished 19th, 1'26" behind Alaphilippe. He might go well because of his form, but his record suggest 5th to 10th at best.

Jonathan Castroviejo and Gianni Moscon have given everything for Ineos over this Giro and emptied the tank on a regular basis, once more today. 10th and 13th in the opening TT, they could well come close to a top 10 again, particularly Castroviejo, who has been Spanish TT champion 5 times. Nelson Oliveira is another should go well, top 10 probably. 

Prices are out now, and as you'd expect Ganna is very short - 2/5 on Betfair, 2/7 with 365 and 33/100 with Unibet. I'd like to have the house on him, but that's very short, he's had a tough three weeks and anything could happen. Affini and Cavagna are around 4-5/1, with Affini slight favourites with some books at 4/1 and Cavagna 5/1. 

Weather-wise, it looks like being a nice sunny day around 21 degrees, with a south-easterly wind that gets lighter as the afternoon goes on, Some weather sites I've checked has it going from 25kmph at noon to 15kmph at 4pm, and another site has wind speed dropping from 6.4 knots at 1pm to 5 knots at 4pm. So that slightly favours the later starters as it will be a headwind as they head southeast to the finish. 

So that gives the GC men a slight advantage, as they will be the last starters obviously.. I really don't think it will make any difference to Ganna, he'll probably still win by 30" or more, but it means Foss and Almeida will have a little bit more help than the earlier guys. Affini starts pretty early, Cavagna about half way through the afternoon.

There's very little of interest in the betting as a result, Cavagna is 17/20 to place, but he could blow it like he did in the first TT. Evens for Almeida to top 3 looks possible, but he's also had a tough few days and that could go tits-up also. Even the matchbets all look about right, but a small acca with four that look strong chances will give us an interest for the afternoon. 

Recommendations:

None on the win or place bets really are of any interest, they really are toss of a coin whether someone has a good or a bad day and the odds don't give us an edge. I'll update tomorrow if I hear anything. 

Matchbets

Bernal to beat Yates, Ganna to beat Affini, Carthy to beat Bardet and Cavagna to beat Bettiol - 3pts at 33/20 with Unibet (boosted)

Add Oliveira to beat Martinez for a five-fold - 1pt at 3/1 (boosted)