so the first grand tour is upon us, but who will win? most of the favourites have had pretty low key build ups this year with only perhaps Nibali showing his hand. Evans and Basso have looked out of sorts or are aiming to peak for le tour instead. Hesjedal, wiggins and sanchez have opted for low profile build ups, training rather than racing in the most. Rodriguez may be worth a punt though he wont like the time trial in the middle. with no contador and froome in this could an outsider get in. the long time trial will surely be dominated by wiggins, the main question seems to be who can get the time back in the several big mountain stages



i think this is going to be a pretty open race, keeping out of trouble in week 1 will be a priority for the favourites, then the real racing starts. with no one in really great form, and several big names out i'm going for nibali to finally shake off wiggo in the big hills with hesjedal up there too, but keep an eye on taylor phinney, possibly the best of the outsiders

With Santambroggio in trouble the top 10 all smelled blood and finished him off.



Great white jersey battle between Betancuor and Majka. Nibali looked like he was maybe trying to finish off Cuddles and Uran too. Nibali has this in the bag barring disaster.



Red jersey battle is between Cuddles and Cav. Cav was playing down his chances today - it all depends how much Cuddles wants the red jersey because he could choose to attack on the final climb if Cav is around.

Yowsers. Proper hard-man effort from Visconti today.

not sure they have the points system right at all for the Giro, you need a decent incentive for sprinters as well as GC and mountains, evans could almost win the red jersey without really wanting to

My review.



The fight for GC didn't materialise but Nibali was a very worthy winner. Might have been a bit more interesting if Sky had realised from day 1 that Wiggins was not in the form he needed to be in and had a plan B in mind rather than sending Uran back to pace Wiggins back in the first week.



Cadel Evans looked good considering his lack of preparation (he was only flung in to try and get some form).



Batancour fulfilled some of the promise he'd shown in the Spring Classics. In fact - Columbian riders were very impressive all round.



Cav - well he went as the only OPQS plan and boy did he deliver. Very hard to win the points jersey at the Giro as a spinter and if the Saturday stage had not been cancelled then I'd argue he would not have won it anyway. 5 stage wins from 6 (ish) winnable sprint stages is a good record but........a lack of credible contenders made his job easier. Might be a bit trickier with Greipel, Kittel, Sagan etc at the Tour.



Overall. Not a bad Grand Tour but I can't help but feel that it lacked something. I didn't get overly excited about the race but then again Nibali had it won from early doors. A decent tit for tat GC battle really brings out the best in a Grand Tour and this just didn't have it.

Nibali's dominance was impressive, but the lack of anyone to really push him was disappointing and therefore made you look elsewhere for stories. Adam Hansen and Visconti's breakaway wins were great and it was a pretty good tour for Movistar. Shame they'll all be working that horrible nerk Valverde in France.

Dowsett's emergence as a real time-trial contender was good, and while Cav did exceptionally well to win the points classification, his battle was more with the system than any other rider. I can't see him getting green in France - fancy Sagan for that mainly due to picking up intermediate sprint points in the hills.