Giro d'Italia 2019: Stage 2 Preview

On paper, a sprinter will win this stage but they probably won’t do enough to take the maglia rosa, because in all likelihood, they’ll finish more than 10 seconds down on the time trial winner from the previous stage. That said, this is not an easy day. It’s 205km and both climbs in the stage have technical descents. There’s also a fair bit of deception here, because although the race doesn’t look that hard on paper if some teams really decide to light things up on the two last climbs then I struggle to see the pure sprinters hanging on. A lot will depend on whether the leader of the race is a real GC rider, and if he wants to defend at such an early point in the race. If the stage really opens up then it’s going to take a super strong sprinter with an incredibly dedicated team around him to win. What I also found was that the descent of the final climb of the San Baronto is super fast, so if a group is still clear at the bottom of the descent it’s going to be quite hard for the chase to become organized. Also, if that final descent is wet then it’s going to be really dangerous. It’s rapid and it’s technical. As I said, a sprinter should win on paper but it could be incredibly tough.