Filippo Ganna, Geraint Thomas and Tadej Pogacar: these are the names that today in the time trial starting from Foligno and finishing in Perugia are candidates to climb onto the first step of the podium.
Pogacar won’t let go today and Thomas will have to keep up with him or even surpass him and then there’s Ganna, an authentic war machine in time trials. However, this is the Giro d’Italia and not an Olympic or world championship event and therefore, on the 40.2 kilometers of route, anything can happen. The first 32 kilometers will be flat, then the most difficult part will begin, where runners like Pogacar and Thomas will be able to perform more than the others.
We will go up starting from Valleceppi, where it will be possible to change bikes and after 1.3 kilometers you will reach a 10.7% gradient. This will be the turning point of the time trial and from 201 meters above sea level you will reach 355 meters in an instant. Immediately afterwards another 700 meters at 6.9%. We will continue for a completely flat kilometer and then the last two kilometers will have an average of 3%. Intermediate times will be taken in Santa Maria degli Angeli, when there are 22 kilometers to go to the finish line, then in Ponte Valleceppi with 6.7 kilometers to go.
In the first 32 kilometers Ganna will be difficult to overtake and he could gain such an advantage over his opponents that he could manage the climb. Pogacar, however, knows how to do well in the time trial and then on the climb he will hardly have competitors capable of doing better than him. But there is Thomas, who today will have to invent something to get closer to the Slovenian, or to try to take the pink jersey off him.
If we go back a year and go to the time trial on Mount Lussari, we can say that on that very day the Welshman lost the Giro, finishing 40″ behind Roglic. Geraint Thomas finished second in the 2023 Giro d’Italia and this time he doesn’t want to finish second again.
Of course the favorites will not be just 3 and we must also include them among the most awaited runners Tobias Foss, Daniel Felipe Martinez and Antonio Tiberi. Foss is out of the rankings, so he will race to win the time trial, while Daniel Martinez, third in the general, must try to maintain his position and then restart in the mountains. Tiberi is twenty-first and in the time trials he knows how to defend himself well, so if today he were to have a good performance he could also enter the top ten of the pink race.
Then there is the great unknown of the Belgian Cian Uijtdebroeks, fourth for the moment in the general classification and white jersey for best youngster. The Belgian from Visma-Lease a Bike is a climber, but in the time trials he is improving and we must not forget that he also won the time trial of the Tour de l’Avenir.
For lovers of statistics, remember that Bernard Hinault won a 37 kilometer time trial in 1982 starting from Perugia and in that same year he won the Giro and the Tour. So be careful, because Pogacar could imitate the French champion 41 years later .
