Stage 19: Pinerolo › Risoul: 162km
Friday’s stage is a short but brutal one. The route includes just two categorized climbs, but one of them (the first one) ascends to the highest point in the race. Moreover, that climb, the Colle d’Agnello, is preceded by around 50 kilometers of … climbing. All told, it’s around 70 kilometers of ascending with an average grade over 3%, with the official climb itself scaling just over 21km at just under 7%.
If that’s not enough to exhaust the riders, the summit is followed by a fast descent that runs right to the foot of the day’s other climb, a Cat. 1 ascent to Risoul. It’s 12.85km at again just under 7%.
As short as it is, the stage will be raced hard from the gun, and on these gradients, I think we are likely to see plenty of riders blow up. In terms of the battle for the stage win, I think the breakaway and the general classification riders have roughly equal chances of fighting it out Friday, but among the GC riders there are far fewer riders on the list of favorites so I’ll start there.
Steven Kruijswijk has looked like the best climber so far in this Giro. He also really wants to win a stage—he’s definitely among the top contenders for Stage 19. However, I don’t think he’ll risk throwing away the pink jersey to chase down an attack from someone three minutes down on GC unless it’s really necessary, which is why I like Esteban Chaves a bit better for this stage. The Colombian has been very strong the past two weeks and this is his terrain. The same could be said for Ilnur Zakarin, another rider who will likely get a bit of room to roam.
Alejandro Valverde looks much better than he did a week ago as well. He’s a candidate for the victory, and so is Vincenzo Nibali. The former Giro winner hasn’t shown the kind of form we’d expected of him at the start of the race, but he’s always a threat.
It’s never easy to predict a breakaway winner but a few strong candidates have emerged over the course of the Giro. Mikel Nieve, Nicolas Roche, David López, Darwin Atapuma, Kanstantsin Siutsou, Alessandro De Marchi, Giovanni Visconti, and Joe Dombrowski are other potential stage winners.
VeloHuman Stage 19 Favorites
1. Esteban Chaves | 2. Steven Kruijswijk | 3. Alejandro Valverde