Stage 1: Herning to Herning, 8.7km individual time trial
Stage profile: An 8.7km individual time trial around the streets of Herning, the home-town of Saxo Bank team owner Bjarne Riis. The first part of the course is twisty and technical, suiting strong bike-handlers and explosive riders comfortable with continuous hard accelerations. The stop-start nature may also dull the legs of the more traditional time trial specialists, preventing them from fully using their power to exploit the more flowing second half of the course. The fastest finishers should duck just under 11 minutes.
Watch out for: Taylor Phinney (BMC), Geraint Thomas (Sky), Jesse Sergent (RadioShack-Nissan), Jack Bobridge (Orica-GreenEDGE), Marco Pinotti (BMC), Thor Hushovd (BMC). Also watch out for sprint team leaders such as Mark Cavendish (Sky) and Matt Goss (Orica-GreenEDGE) to push harder than you might expect in the hope of grabbing the maglia rosa over the next few days.
Finally, here is a video of today’s route, courtesy of Cycling the Alps. For full Giro d’Italia fly-throughs and more, visit http://www.cyclingthealps.com/:
The Giro d’Italia starts today, Saturday 5th May, and concludes on Sunday 27th. Live action and highlights will be shown daily on Eurosport. For other channels check cyclingfans.com. VeloVoices is covering the Giro with daily recaps on the blog, on our Facebook page, and we will also be on Twitter throughout the race, where we will be live-tweeting updates from as many of the stages as we can.
Giro d’Italia preview
Contenders for the maglia rosa
Link: Official website