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Published on Wednesday, 13 May 2015 23:54

Giro d'Italia St 6

Montecatini Terme to Castiglioni Della Pescaia 

Thursday 14th May, 183kms 

Unusually for a Grand Tour it has taken until stage 6 for the sprinters to get a second chance. Ordinarily they would have had 2, 3 or maybe even 4 sprint stages by now, but the Giro is no ordinary race of course. After two exciting days in the hills we're back on a relatively flat stage. 

I say a relatively flat stage but there is the small little lump of a Cat 4 climb to Pomarance on the way, but it shouldn't cause too many problems. At the bottom of the hills though there's 40kms on the flat on the run to the finish. 

Lots of drama again today in Stage 5, but rather disappointingly the break were given about 2 minutes too much time going to the final part of the climb and Jan Polanc held on for a superb victory for Lampre Merida. It was very annoying as the three favourites were battling it out for 3rd place, if the break had been caught earlier we'd have got a return on our Porte bet at the 10/1 e/w as he finished 3rd of the three favourites. He always looked comfortable but it was disappointing that he didn't really make an attack, I thought he looked like he could have put Contador under pressure if he attacked, but he decided to just follow wheels. 

It was a blank on the stage winner bets then, but thankfully the match bets came up trumps with the 10/3 acca landing with Porte, Uran, Konig and Landa comfortably doing the business. Incredibly for one of my single bets, Niemiec and Izagirre finished side by side on their own, and of course Niemiec crossed the line first to bust that 6/5 bet!

It does look like it really is a three horse race now though with Contador in the Maglia Rosa, Aru just 2" behind him and Porte just 20" back. Contador has never lost a race he has led the GC in but he has never had to lead from so early in the race. It'll be an interesting next two weeks for sure. Can he keep it up? Can Aru keep it up after being so badly affected by his 'illness'? Can Porte stick with them on the climbs and then destroy them in the TT? All to play for still as far as I'm concerned, Porte and Contador's prices haven't really changed, Aru has been cut to 4/1 3rd favourite now as the challenge from Uran, Van den Broeck and all the rest looks to be all over already.

The Route

A pretty non-descript route, starting inland from the Tyrennian coast at Montecatini Terme and heads south, parallel to the coast until it reaches Ribolla after 150kms. At Ribolla they turn right and head in a south-westerly direction to the finish in the sea-side town of Castiglioni Della Pescaia. 

At 183kms it's longer than the previous two stages, but still quite short. Maybe the organisers felt they needed an easy day after the first mountain finish. The first 80kms or so are almost dead flat, but shortly after Saline Di Volterra they start the only categorised climb of the day, the Pomerance, which is just 6.3km long at an average of 4.4%, max of 11%. It really shouldn't cause any problems and should only serve as a battle ground for some KOM points for the break members. 

It's a strange climb though because the KOM comes at the first climb of a series of hills that go on for 30kms more and rise for another 200m. None of the climbs are hard at all though but the repetition of them, and with the strong-man sprinters teams likely to be pushing it, some might get in a spot of trouble. 

With 63kms still to go from the top of the last hill there is plenty of time to recover and get back on, unless some teams like OGE decide to hammer it to try to keep the pure sprinters behind, but it's unlikely to succeed I think. They descend for approximately 25kms, then the last 38kms or so are almost dead flat as they had back to sea level. It is the first time that Castiglioni Della Pescaia has featured as a stage finish city. With 2.5kms to go there is a ninety degree left hander and then a right hander, then as they hit the sea-front with 1km to go the road jinks right again but the last kilometre is pretty straight and dead flat. 

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