The final stage will be a long celebration stage for Alberto Contador as they roll across billiard-table like flatlands for 175 boring kilometres until the final sprint in Milan. It's one day that I won't be complaining about the irritating habit of Eurosport not going to the live coverage as soon as they can, I think I'll tune in proper for the last hour at most.
So just one more day of torture. One more day of climbing. One more day for a stage win if you're not a top sprinter. It's another brutal day in the saddle and another day where the hardest climb of the day is the penultimate climb rather than the final climb. It's also similar to the previous stage in that there are 150kms of flat nothingness and then an explosion of climbing in the last 50kms.
This is a monster stage at 236kms, on the third last day of a three week Giro. And not only is it long, it is bloody hard too. Ok, the first 150kms are pretty uneventful, bar a Cat 3 bump they need to get over after 85kms, but the final 86kms or so are pretty savage. Three Cat 1 climbs and over 3,250m of climbing in the last 86kms, it's going to be epi.
A trip around the lakes today for the peloton, and for the first 124kms it is as flat as the previous day's stage, as they skirt around Lake Lugano and then Lago di Varese and Lago di Comabbio and finally the Lake Maggiore. As they reach Verbania with 110kms gone they turn away from the finish town and once again go along the shores of Lake Maggiore.
Today they start very close to the Swiss border in Tirano and end in Switzerland in Lugano. Even though Lugano is surrounded by mountains the stage is more or less flat bar a little Cat 3 lump inside the first 15kms. It has sprint written all over it, but that means nothing in this crazy Giro d'Italia.
The last rest day was followed by what was supposed to be a nice easy sprint stage, almost like a second rest day for the GC men and climbers. As it was, it turned out to be yet another dramatic and stressful day, yet another on this crazy Giro. This time around they hit the high mountains again, on a brutally hard day where they start climbing right from the outset.
So this is it then, the long-awaited individual Time Trial that many saw as being hugely pivotal in deciding the winner of the Giro. It's just a shame then that it now looks like this is no longer the case, with Porte's untimely puncture and unfortuntate assistance from a mate has possibly denied us the chance to see Contador having to play catch-up in the final week.
If only Alejandro Valverde, Joaquim Rodriguez, Dan Martin or Dani Moreno were here it would be a bit easier to pick a winner of this stage, given the punchy finish. A final 500m at over 10% is a finish for specialists in short punchy affairs, but we could see two battles, one for the stage and one between the GC men for small time gains.
Forlì to Imola (Autodromo Ferrari)
Start your engines..! We head on a short run in a W shape from Forli to the Ferrari racetrack, where they hit the Tre Monti, not three, but four times. They do three laps of a 15km circuit at the end of the stage and the hilly course probably counts out a lot of sprinters on a day for the puncheurs.
Civatanvo Marche to Forli
Tuesday 19th May, 199kms
Rest day over and it's a nice, gentle re-introduction to racing, with probably one of the easiest and non-descript stages of the Giro. With barely a ripple in the road on the way to Forlì, the views should be spectacular, but the racing maybe a little less so. It should be a good battle among the Points Jersey contenders though.
After the stalemate and limited drama of the stage to Campitello Matese, the GC guys would be forgiven for taking a day off and rolling along in this stage. It looks a stage set for a breakaway win, with many lumps to get over in the day, including a long Cat 2 and a steep Cat 1 climb and a nasty little sting in the tail with 15kms to go.
After a sprinters stage and a lumpy Milan-San-Remo type of stage, we're back in to the hills again with a summit finish up to Campitello Matese. The Giro traditionally has a hilly stage on the second Saturday of the race and this year is no different, with an afternoon TV treat in store with another battle between the big three.
This is the longest stage of the Giro at a monster 264kms, one of the longest races in fact of the entire year. At 264kms it is longer than Paris-Roubaix and just 900m shorter than Paris-Roubaix. It's got a bit of the Milan-San-Remo about it with its distance and the increasing difficulty in the stage as it heads towards the finish.
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.
This is the Giro. And they love their climbs in the Giro, so how about hitting them with a nasty summit finish on just the fifth stage? Why not? We finally leave the Ligurian coast as they head in an S shape up in to the hills to Abetone, to a summit finish made famous by Fausto Coppi when he won his first Giro in 1940.
There aren't many more beautiful places in the world to finish a bike race in than this part of Italy and it would have killed off two of my life ambitions to have gone to this stage! To tour the Ligurian coast and to watch a stage of the Giro in Italy.. Maybe next year..
We may only be on the 3rd stage, but what a profile greets the riders today as they already hit the mountains on a short but very tricky stage. They start and finish on the beautiful Ligurian coast but start climbing after just 2.5kms! It's the shortest stage of the race, but is sure to cause a lot of hurt to those who may be looking to ride themselves in to the race.
I've done the Favourites and the Outsiders and who I think will win the Maglia Rosa, the Sprints jersey, the KOM jersey, the Young Riders jersey and the Team Classification. This particular page will just be a collection of other miscellaneous markets that I see bets I like in, updated throughout the Giro.
A day for the sprinters but also one for someone to go for the first mountains jersey of the race, always a keenly fought contest. With two laps of a flat finishing circuit we should see the sprinters fight it out for the stage win, but with tight, twisty roads around the old city of Genova they need to watch out for race-ending crashes..
Not only is there a very distinct and unusual jersey for the leader of the race, a bright pink one, but there are also slightly unusual colours for the winners of the Mountains and Sprinters jerseys in the Giro. The leader of the sprints competition wears red, the leader of the King of the Mountains a deep blue jersey. At least the young riders stays white...
I have covered the Favourites in this other preview already, now I'm going to take a look at the outsiders. Guys who could cause a shock and upset the big favourites.. Guys like Fabio Aru who finished 3rd last year or Ryder Hesjedal who won in 2012 at 50/1.
This year's Giro may not have attracted as good a field as last year for various reasons, but we should be in for a classic battle between the former team-mates Richie Porte and Alberto Contador over the 21 stages. Nairo Quintana isn't here to defend his title, preferring instead to prepare for the Tour de France - Vuelta double.
The shadow boxing is over, this is the real deal now. We've had the Classics, Tirreno-Adriatico, Catalunya, Pais-Vasco, Trentino and Romandie and they've all served up clues and pointers for this first Grand Tour of the year. Some may not have been 100% tuned up yet, will some have peaked too soon?
San Lorenzo Al Mare to San Remo
Saturday 9th May, 17.8kms
The first stage of the 2015 Giro D'Italia kicks the race off with a Team Time Trial, like it did in Belfast last year. This time though they are back on home soil with a 17.8km jaunt along the coast which takes in a section of the 'Cicliabile Riviera Dei Fiori', a tourist bike path that runs along the old coastal route of the Italian State Railways between San Lorenzo Al Mare and San Remo.
