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Published on Saturday, 29 April 2017 18:23

Giro D'Italia St 1

Alghero to Olbia

Friday 5th May, 206kms

The Giro starts on a Friday again this year to allow for the three rest days later in the race. The 100th edition kicks off in Sardinia, with a long 206km run along the northern coast, finishing in Albio. 

So no prologue or time trial to start the race, there's more than enough time trialling later in the race. Instead they start with a stage that should be one for the sprinters, but could well see a bit of a shake up on the Cat 4 climb that comes just 20kms from the finish. 

Last year's first stage started in Appledoorn, where Tom Dumoulin struck a blow for the home fans, winning the TT from Primoz Roglic to take the first Pink Jersey of the race. This year it should be a sprinter that should don the first pink jumper of the race - but who will it be? There's quite a lineup of sprinters here, with André Greipel, Fernando Gaviria, Caleb Ewan, Sacha Modolo, Sam Bennett, Nicola Ruffoni, Kristian Sbaragli, Jakub Marexzko and last year's Sprints Jersey winner Giacomo Nizzolo. 

The Route

For the first time Alghero hosts a stage at the Giro. The stage runs along the northern coast of the island, and it's a relatively wavy and bumpy route, with a long, steady sequence of constant undulations. It also has a number of short, steep ramps, including 3 categorised climbs in Multeddu, Trinità d’Agultu and San Pantaleo. The latter, less than 20 km from the finish, totals approximately 5km at an average of 8% slope, with maximum gradients even higher in the first part. A rolling finale leads all the way to Olbia, that unlike Alghero, has already hosted twice the Giro in 1991.

The last 5kms are gently downhill and there are five tight bends to negotiate in the last 4.5kms. Two km before the finish, the route covers a short stretch on stone-slab paved road. There is a last, wide bend 600 m before the finish, leading into the home straight on 8-m wide asphalt road.

Analysis and Picks

So Bet365 and Paddy Power came out on Tuesday night with their prices for this stage (and a lot of other markets....) and it was interesting the divergence in opinions on their first shows.. Bet365 were up to their tricks again with offering three riders at exactly the same price, with Gaviria, Ewan and Greipel all just 5/2 - meaning they think there is an 86% chance that one of the three of them will win it.. They may be right, but at least go out on a limb a little bit on one or two of them rather than just saying 'we haven't a clue, put them all at 5/2'.

Add in Sam Bennett at 8/1 and if they were operating at a 100% book then there is now just a 3% chance of someone other than the top four in the betting winning. But of course they don't operate to a 100% book, more like 150% or bigger. At least Paddy Power were a bit more imaginative and took an opinion on them (or more likely an early bet swayed their opinion)  - they went 7/4 on Gaviria early doors, with Greipel at 5/2, Ewan at 3/1 and Bennett at 16/1. That makes it an 90% chance for the top 3 winning and 95% with Bennett. 

So it will end in a sprint right? Well that's what it looks like, but can the San Pantaleo climb that comes just 20kms from the finish shake things up a bit? It averages 5.6% over 3,250m , but it averages 7.2% for the first kilometre and kicks up to over 9% about half way up. We might get attackers try their luck, but the likelihood is that Quickstep, Lotto-Soudal and Orica-Scott will be controlling things at the front of the peloton and drive up that final climb at a high enough pace to deter attacks, but not too fast as to lose their sprinters.

I would think Quickstep will go the hardest up this climb as they might feel they have a chance to put Ewan and Greipel under pressure, but even if they did shake them out a bit, there's a 5km descent and 11kms along the flat in the run-in to the finish where they will likely get back on again. But if they can disrupt their sprint train and put them under pressure long before the final few kilometres it might be enough to swing the balance in favour of the Quicksteppers in the last 4kms as they enter the town. There are a number of tight bends along the way, but they are on pretty big roads so they should be relatively safe. From once they get through that last left-hander with 1500m to go it should be straight-forward.

So who wins then? Well before prices came out I had Fernando Gaviria as my favourite for this, he's the fastest man in the race as far as I'm concerned. Four wins already this season, 5th in MSR, seven wins last season, the young Colombian is ploughing his own furrow in a field full of Colombian climbers. He will cope fine with the hill and he has a superb leadout here with him, I can see Jungels literally towing the whole field behind him for most of the last 25kms, then he has Ilio Keisse, Pieter Serry, Laurens de Plus, Davide Martinelli and finally Max Richeze to get him in to that last 500m in second wheel. He has the power to go long, he could well go from maybe 300m, as soon as they straighten for home, but I hope he doesn't go too long, say just coming off the final bend as that could see him swamped by the fast-finishing Ewan. 

André Greipel of course is a battle-hardened veteran of stages like this, having tasted victory in 21 Grand Tour stages in his career, including four in the Giro. Three of those stages came last year, the first on stage 5 was a lumpy affair he won ahead of Démare and Colbrelli, the second on stage 7 ahead of Nizzolo and Modolo on a day not too dis-similar to this one, and the third was a dead-flat day when he beat Ewan, Nizzolo and Modolo.. so basically he beat more or less all of his key rivals here this year, bar Gaviria, before promptly packing his bags and going home ahead of the mountains. 

Three wins this year so far, one of which was in the Algarve with Gaviria down in 7th place, he also finished an impressive 7th in Paris-Roubaix and 20th in Flanders. He didn't finish the Scheldeprijs and he didn't finish in Frankfurt on Monday, let's hope the weather is good for him in Sardinia. He has a very solid team here with him, including Lars Bak and Moreno Hofland, but I have a slight preference for Quickstep's team here, I think they look stronger and more experienced lead-out men. It can sometimes take Greipel a few stages to get in to the swing of things, as we saw last year, he was only 15th in the first sprint in Nijmegen and 4th in the second sprint, beaten by Nizzolo for 3rd. 

Caleb Ewan is also around the 5/2 mark and he too has a chance of course as he is a super-fast sprinter with a strong lead-out too. He didn't really get close in the early sprints in last year's race, finishing 7th, 12th, 9th and 4th, but popped up with a 2nd place behind Greipel on the 12th stage before going home too. He only won two races after that for the rest of the year, one was the Hamburg Cyclassics ahead of Degenkolb and Nizzolo, the other was the final stage in the TOB in London on the uphill sprint to Picadilly. 

He started this year on fire with 4 stage wins in the TDU and another in Abu Dhabi, but since then has gone off the boil a little, crashing out of Tirreno on only the first road stage and struggling through the Classics, which are not his bag at all. He almost won two stages in the TDY last week though, but you'd expect him really to be beating Dylan Groenewegen if he was at 100% in the first sprint, and he was way too far back from Bouhanni in the second one when Bouhanni kicked. 

His team is strong though - Alexander Edmonson is riding superbly at the moment, finishing 3rd in the Prologue, then finishing 4th twice in a row. The first time he was 2nd in the sprint for 3rd place behind Colbrelli and the second time he almost caught all the sprinters by surprise with a superb attack in the last 200m, only to be swamped in the shadow of the finish line by Viviani and two others. He will be a big help here in the final stages of the leadout with that kick, as will the old dogs Mezgec, Tuft and Hepburn, with Juul-Jensen the man for the big pulls earlier in the chase. I think he will be in a great position turning the last bend with 500m to go, it's just whether Gaviria can get the jump on him and hold him off I think is how it might pan out.

Sam Bennett is 8/1 with 365 and twice that price with Paddy Power, it's unusual for the Irish bookie to be so big on an Irish runner, they usually are the other way around. Bennett was the chosen man for Bora on Monday in Frankfurt, depsite what the PR from Bora will tell you about Sagan's presence there, but unfortunately he was not able to deliver at the finish, even though Sagan was not there. In fact, the fact that Sagan abandoned might have been a contributing factor to his failure to deliver, as he was left out in the wind a lot in the closing stages, having to look after himself, and suffered cramps in the last kilometre and couldn't sprint.  

His stage win in Paris-Nice announced him to the big time, beating practically all the biggest sprinters in the world, including Kristoff, Kittel, Démare, Mattews, Degenkolb and Greipel down in 7th. He been doing a lot of training on his own since, but also hasn't been going great since. He DNF'ed the 3 days of de Panne and pulled out of Pais Vasco a few kilometres in to the first stage, seemingly only starting so the team didn't get hit with a fine for starting with an incomplete team........ Very annoying for those of us who backed him on the day.. 

He will miss Steve Archbold here for the leadout for sure, but Konrad and Postlberger will be crucial to getting him in the right position, it was Konrad who brought him from a long way back in the Paris Nice stage he won to the front of the race, wouldn't have won the sprint without him. He also has Benedetti, Selig, Barta and Pelucchi to get him to the front and protect him, if he gets a clear run and displays that burst of speed in PN he will go very close to winning this. But I'm a bit worried about those cramps in Frankfurt, yes the weather was probably a contributing factor, but I might wait to see how he gets on in this first stage before thinking about backing him later in the race.

And of course we have Giacomo Nizzolo and Sacha Modolo here, two of my picks for the Sprints jersey, and both have a chance of a top 3 finish here too, but I don't think either of them have the top speed to be beating the top 3 in the betting here to take the win. Modolo definitely has the edge over Nizzolo in a head-to-head contest and he has the slightly better form, having landed two stages in Croatia, which was of course Nizzolo's first race since his injuries. Nizzolo might take a few stages to get in to it, but his 2nd place in stage 3 in Croatia showed that he is pretty fit and ready to go.

Niccolo Ruffoni could go well too, he sprinted really well in Croatia, taking two stages in a row, but that was against pretty limited opposition and a Nizzolo who was racing his first race of the season. Prior to that his season hasn't been great, I can't see him breaking the top 5 here. Kristian Sbaragli and Jakub Marezcko are similar in ability and it's often positioning and the lack of team-mates right at the death that hampers them. 5th to 10th at best for them too. Matteo Pelucchi is a massive price at 100/1, but unless something happens to Bennett he won't be sprinting.. and even then he wouldn't touch the top favourites here. 

Watch out for a late charge off the front from Jasper Stuyven, but I think there is very little chance we will see anything other than a mass charge through the streets of Olbia and it may just be the bravest and the best leadouts will be rewarded. And I think that points to Quickstep and Gaviria - I think they will dominate the last 5kms and will steer him through the last 2kms in 3rd wheel, for Richeze to take lead him through the last left-hander and in to the finishing straight. I think Ewan could well chase him home and Greipel might have a fight on his hands for 3rd from Modolo and Bennett. I was going to suggest backing Bennett at 16/1 as it was far too big, but PP have woken up and cut him to 8/1 so it's not worth it any more I think.

Recommendations:

2pts win on Fernando Gaviria at 9/4 with various.  

Matchbets

Ewan to beat Greipel - 3pts at 4/6

Modolo to beat Nizzolo - 2pts at 8/11 

Gaviria to beat Bennett and Sbaragli to beat Bauhaus - 2pts at 17/20