Key race facts
91:39:02 – Total race time for overall winner Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Barracuda), an average speed of 38.21kph.
157 – Number of finishers, out of 198 starters.
Rodriguez shares an unenviable record with the late Laurent Fignon (Image courtesy of Katusha)
16 – In seconds, Hesjedal’s winning margin over Joaquim Rodriguez, the fourth smallest ever in Giro history.
2 – Joaquim Rodriguez became only the second rider to lose the maglia rosa on the final stage of the Giro. In 1984 Laurent Fignon lost out to Francesco Moser on the final stage, also an individual time trial.
5 – Number of different riders who wore the leader’s pink jersey during the race (Taylor Phinney, Ramunas Navardauskas, Adriano Malori, Hesjedal and Rodriguez).
5:27:06 – Euskaltel’s Miguel Minguez was the last classified finisher, five hours and 27 minutes slower than the winner. Only seven stages took longer to complete.
The champion
31 – Age of Ryder Hesjedal (he turns 32 in December).
1 – Hesjedal became the first Canadian rider to wear the leader’s pink jersey at the Giro, and was the first Canadian to take overall victory at any of the three Grand Tours.
Hesjedal holds the winner’s trophy aloft in front of Milan’s Duomo (image courtesy of Giro website)
0 – Individual stages won by Hesjedal during the race. (He was, however, part of the TTT-winning Garmin-Barracuda team.)
60 – Hesjedal had only completed one Giro before this year. He was 60th in the 2008 edition.
6 – Previous best performance at a Grand Tour – sixth at the 2010 Tour de France.
0 – Number of previous stage race wins.
6 – Number of professional victories: three individual races and three as a member of a winning team time trial, including the Verona TTT in this race.
The stage winners
17 – Number of different stage winners (excluding the team time trial).
Despite 3 stage wins, Cav just missed out on the points jersey (image courtesy of Wikipedia)
2 – Number of riders who won more than one stage: Mark Cavendish (three) and Joaquim Rodriguez (two). It was no surprise, then, that the two riders also topped the points standings.
13 – 13 of the 22 teams won stages during the race, with Sky leading the way with three (all by Cavendish). Six other teams (BMC, Androni Giocattoli, Movistar, Katusha, Farnese Vini and Astana) won two each.
6 – Italian riders won six stages, more than any other nation. Spain (four) and Britain (three) were the only other multiple stage-winning countries.
21 – At the age of 21 years 313 days, stage one winner Taylor Phinney became the youngest rider since Laurent Fignon (in 1982) to lead the Giro.
1 – After stage four‘s team time trial, Garmin-Barracuda’s Ramunas Navardauskas became the first Lithuanian to don the race leader’s jersey at any of the three Grand Tours. He wore it for two days.
2 – Astana’s Paolo Tiralongo won stage seven to record only his second professional win. The 34-year old’s first win also came at the Giro, last year.
13 – This may just be Mark Cavendish‘s lucky number. He won stage 13 of the Giro for the third time in his career, and is the only rider to have won stage 13 at each of the three Grand Tours.
A maiden Giro win for Costa Rica (image courtesy of Movistar)
1 – In winning stage 14, Andrey Amador (Movistar) became the first cyclist from Costa Rica to win a stage at any of the three Grand Tours.
100 – Joaquim Rodriguez won stage 17 on May 23rd to register Spain’s 100th Giro stage win on the first anniversary of fellow Spaniard Xavier Tondo‘s death.
49.429 – In kph, the average speed for stage 18 (won by Andrea Guardini), the fastest non-time trial stage in Giro history, breaking a record which had stood since 1966.
6:54:41 – Time taken for Thomas De Gendt (Vacansoleil-DCM) to win stage 20, the longest stage of the race in terms of duration.
2 – Sky’s Geraint Thomas finished second in the two individual time trials which book-ended the race. On each occasion he was beaten by a BMC rider: Taylor Phinney (stage one) and Marco Pinotti (stage 21).
And a few other random stats …
38 – Farnese Vini’s Luca Mazzanti was the oldest participant in this year’s Giro, starting at the age of 38 years and 91 days.
20 – Age of FDJ sprinter Arnaud Demare, the youngest rider in the race.
De Gendt was one of the Giro’s big surprises (image courtesy of Vacansoleil)
63 – Third-placed man Thomas De Gendt had only ridden in one previous Grand Tour. He finished 63rd at the 2011 Tour de France.
5 – This was only the fifth time in the history of the race that no Italians finished in the top three overall (also 1972, 1987, 1988 and 1995).
22 – All 22 teams put a rider in at least one breakaway during the race. Liquigas-Cannondale (stage 20) and Sky (stage 19) were the last two teams to do so, on the last two road stages.
1 – Joaquim Rodriguez became the first Spanish rider ever to win the Giro points classification, edging out Mark Cavendish.
1 – Cavendish fell just one point short of becoming only the fifth rider to win the points competitions in the Giro, Tour and Vuelta.
Some data is courtesy of Infostrada Sports.
Link: Official website
Thanks Tim. I enjoyed the final stages of the Giro this year, particularly because there were a number of possible winners into the last couple of days.
A young friend observed that everyone looked tired and careful for the final stages, so he suspects doping was not happening. He preferred the doping-fuelled attacks and breakaways of the old days, he tells me!
Thanks Richard. After an slow-burning but intriguing first couple of weeks, the final week certainly lived up to its billing. Really pleased for Hesjedal, who I was foolish enough to dismiss mid-race, and it’s part of the joy of cycling that few would have predicted he would finish on the podium (let alone the top step) and I bet no one forecast Thomas De Gendt, who surprised us all – and I suspect himself.
It definitely helped there was no one dominant climber throughout. Some days Rodriguez looked unbeatable, but on others he struggled to keep pace – and the same could be said for all the other leading contenders. Not sure you can attribute it all to a cleaner peloton – the parcours for stagwe 20 in particular would have been murderous in any era – but it’s certainly not an unreasonable assumption to make.
Now for the Tour …