Although if you blink you might miss the prologue, it’s only 1,150 meters long. It looks like Basso understands that Lance (and others) will be too difficult to overtake in the Tour (this year) so he is focusing on the Giro. It will be fun to watch Basso, Simoni & Cunego duke it out. There will be plenty of dark horses including Tom Danielson fresh off his TdG win. Also keep an eye for Vladimir Karpets & Haimar Zubeldia as spoilers. To bad OLN will only have weekend coverage but at least it’s better than last year. If I had to pick a winner now it would be Cunego.
Dave in VA
Zoomy posted this earlier:
OLN EXPANDS WEEKEND TELEVISION SCHEDULE FOR THE
2005 GIRO D’ITALIA AND OFFERS WEEKDAY WEBCAST ON OLNTV.COM
OLN®, the home of professional cycling, announced an expanded weekend schedule of same-day coverage for the 2005 Giro d’Italia, the 88th edition of the Italian national tour, along with an exclusive option to view streaming, live world feed of weekday stages on the network’s Web site, OLNTV.com.
OLN’s Cyclysm television coverage will be hosted by cycling experts Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen and Bob Roll and will include same-day coverage of the race on Saturdays and Sundays at 5 p.m. ET beginning May 7. For cycling fans longing for minute-by-minute Giro action weekdays, OLNTV.com will offer streaming video of the world feed and archives of those stages. Cycling fans will be able to watch all the action of the Italian Grand Tour online without commercial interruption for only $5.95.
I think it should be more exciting this year than in years past because of the number of Pro Tour Teams involved. The competition between Cuenego and Simoni should be fun to watch because they are both peaking at the same time. Then you have Basso with a pretty good team around him as well.
Don’t know if Basso is focusing on the Giro becasue he doesn’t think he can overtake Lance or if it’s a question of the Giro being his national tour and the most important race of the year for the Italian sponsors and tifosi. And, yeah, this should be a good Giro but I see Basso spining into Milan looking pretty in pink.
Frank
Hey Frank I think your right. Here are some Q&A excerpts from an interview with Basso on CSC team site:
"csc.com: Was the idea to race the Giro something that came from you or from Bjarne Riis?
IB: “The main reason is because I am Italian and the people in Italy have asked me to race the Giro. I am so happy for this. I will try to give something to the tifosi . I will try this new solution. I think everybody will be happy in the end of the season.”
csc.com: Many people believe you can win the Tour de France, why suddenly shift your focus to the Giro?
IB: “It’s not easy to win the Tour this year. I did a very nice Tour last year, a very strong Tour, but not nearly strong enough to win. I still lost 5 to 6 minutes to Lance (Armstrong)—that’s a lot of time. I think it’s better to talk about winning the Tour when you arrive closer to the winner, not six minutes away. That’s a big difference.”
csc.com: What’s the difference between the Giro and the Tour?
IB: “The Tour and the Giro aren’t the same. If you finish third in the Tour, then you can go to try to win the Giro. The objective is to get onto the podium, but when Armstrong isn’t there, the other guys are more human.”