2022 Giro d'Italia: Full race route confirmed with just 26km of time trialing

(Image credit: RCS Sport)

The 2022 Giro d’Italia will feature the race’s lowest amount of time trialling in sixty years, with just 26.3km on the route. RCS Sport completed its protracted route presentation on Thursday by confirming that the race will conclude with a 17.1km time trial finishing in the Arena in Verona.

The Giro also includes a 9.2km time trial on stage 2, giving the event its lowest total mileage against the clock since 1962. On that occasion, there were no time trials on the route as Franco Balmamion claimed the first of his two consecutive overall victories.

After the Giro’s first foreign start in four years, the race takes in an early rest day to facilitate the long transfer to Sicily and, for the fourth time in six years, the corsa rosa will take in a summit finish at Mount Etna. This time around, the Giro takes in a two-part ascent, starting the climb from Ragalgna, as in 2018 when Esteban Chaves won, and then descending briefly to switch to the final approach from Nicolosi, which featured in 2011.

The race resumes after the rest day with a day in the Marche that could have been lifted from Tirreno-Adriatico. Stage 10 brings the gruppo up to Sant’Ignazio di Montelupone and through Recanati, the birthplace of poet Giacomo Leopardi, as well as to Filottrano, the homeplace of the late Michele Scarponi. The climb of Monsano features in the finale as well as a series of unclassified muri on the run-in to the finish in Jesi.

The sprinters will enjoy another opportunity on the trek north to Reggio Emilia on stage 11 before another tricky, hilly stage from Parma to Genoa, which takes in the climb and descent of the Passo del Bocco, where Wouter Weylandt tragically lost his life on the 2011 Giro. After the descent to Chiavari, the route takes in the category 3 Ruta, by way of Chiesa Vecchia, and then the new category 2 ascent of Monte Becca, before the drop to the finish in Genoa.

The staccato rhythm of week two continues with another flat stage from San Remo to Cuneo – in some ways, the reverse of the novel 2020 Milan-San Remo route – before an intriguing day in the hinterland of Turin on stage 14. Just 153km in length, the breathless stage nonetheless crams in some 3,470m of climbing by taking in two-and-a-half laps of a circuit comprising the Colle della Maddalena, Superga and the Roccia Santa Brigida.

The climbing continues after the Giro’s third and final rest day, with one of the toughest stages of the entire race. Stage 16 takes in a troika of category 1 ascents, with the Goletto di Cadino and the Mortirolo preceding the stiff final ascent of Santa Cristina and short, fast descent into Aprica. Although the Mortirolo is climbed from its ‘gentler’ – its all relative – Edolo approach, there is nothing mild about this stage, which totals 5540m of climbing. The Santa Cristina, meanwhile, was the scene of Marco Pantani’s dismissal of Miguel Indurain on the 1994 Giro and, inevitably, it has been branded as the ‘Montagna Pantani’ on the 2022 route.

The race remains in the high mountains on stage 17, which takes in the Passo del Tonale immediately after the start in Ponte di Legno. After a long descent into Moser country in Palù di Giovo, there is a wickedly tough finale to proceedings, with a new approach of the Passo del Vetriolo followed in quick succession by the steep, hair-pinned Salita del Menador, which brings the race up the Kaiserjägerweg, a road laid out by Austro-Hungarian troops during the First World War. A rippling, 8km plateau brings the race from the summit to the finish in Lavarone.

The final weekend of the Giro, meanwhile, sees its toughest mountain stage, the Dolomite tappone from Belluno to the Passo Fedaia, beneath the distinctive precipice of the Marmolada. The stage takes in three category 1 climbs as the race goes above 2,000m of altitude for the first time. The Passo San Pellegrino is followed by the Cima Coppi, the highest point of this Giro, the 2,239m-high Passo Pordoi. The stage finish, meanwhile, is on the fearsome Passo Fedaia, where the notoriously steep and straight section at Malga Ciapela could turn the Giro on its head right at the last.

And yet it doesn’t end there. If the 51,000m of climbing fail to separate the pretenders for the maglia rosa – and that was the case in 2020, when Tao Geoghegan Hart and Jai Hindley entered the final day in a virtual dead heat – then the 17.1km time trial in Verona will serve as a penalty shoot-out. The time trialling kilometres may have been pared back to a minimum on this Giro, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t be decisive, as the 2017 Tour de France already demonstrated.

Barry Ryan was Head of Features at Cyclingnews. He has covered professional cycling since 2010, reporting from the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and events from Argentina to Japan. His writing has appeared in The Independent, Procycling and Cycling Plus. He is the author of The Ascent: Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche and the Rise of Irish Cycling’s Golden Generation, published by Gill Books.