That's right! FIVE races on tap today!
So get out your portable computational units, silence your kids, give the dog a juicy bone, dim the lights, and tell the neighbors to take a vacation because you got some major race juggling to do. Let's set the stages:
- Denmark starts the day off with TWO stages. Old Skool. Morning RR (think I'm gonna be there for that one? Ha!) and the afternoon ITT. The GC will shake out with today's stage-though tomorrow does have those climbs up the Tourmalet, Zoncolan, and L'Angrilu in store. Okay, you got me. But today is a good one.
- Burgos has a fairly simple flattish stage. Three cat 3 climbs but they stop well before the finish. Klodo again? Pozzato with his Stashe?
- Portugal's got a hella climb with two more skanky hills about halfway through the stage but they look like they tap out at about the 120 km mark and the stage is 174 km's long so there's lots of time for the peloton to regroup. Am I the only one who wishes this race had a higher profile?
- Poland has its last stage today and there's still some GC suspense left. Greg Bola is still threatening Dan Martin and with bonus seconds at the intermediate sprints and finish line of a flat stage and with Bola being a sprinter and Martin decidedly not, thinks could get dicey for Vaughters' boy. He might regret not dropping Bole yesterday.
- That leave the Citta di Camaiore, a hot little Tuscan number (near Pisa) that's also a cat 6 VDS one day race. As you can see by the startlist, we are talking about Italians galore. (And between this race and Burgos, practically any Italian racer who's anybody is racing today.) Who tends to win this race? A climber who can finish: what a surprise in Italy! Last year Vinny Nibali won by nine seconds over Leo Bert and 30 others. The year before Leo Bert won by 17 seconds over nine others. You get the idea. The main obstacle is the scuzzy Monte Pitoro which climbybike has a profile of here. Yikes! The peloton does that thing six times, the last cresting about 13 km before the finish line, thus making for a frantic attempt at a regrouping at the end. Here's the full course profile.
Now for links, which umwolverine is gently taking me by the hand to do right:
Cyclingfans. Steephill.tv. The new BVLS link. (Scroll down till you get to cycling.) My2p2. from SPORT. And WorldliveTV. No doubt the Lady of the Links will have links to the race tickers too. Check the early comments for more info. Thanks um! If I could give you 1000 VDS points I would.
Speaking of VDS, we have 1050 points up for grabs today, 735 of them from Poland.