Giro d'Italia stage 6: Reggio Calabria – Terme Luigiane 217 km

neris

A spicy finish with hills and hairpins lend this stage an air of Milan-Sanremo but the final two kilometres are all uphill so even if there’s a sprint we’ll see some different names in the mix.

The race finally reaches mainland, with a long medium mountain stage starting from Reggio Calabria and heading north almost entirely along the coast. The first climb of the day comes after 27 km: Barritteri (GPM3, 11.3 km at 4.2%) starts with solid ramps and then flattens out towards the top. It will be a key passage for the daily breakaway. After a fast descent, some false flats will lead to another uphill section, made by short, isolated ramps that will bring the riders to the two very close intermediate sprints of the day. Once past those, the route goes back to the coast, and stays there for pretty much the rest of the stage. Roughly 100 km are totally flat and easy (beside the low risk of crosswinds), but after those the terrain starts to get tricky, with the second categorized climb of the day, Fuscaldo (GPM4, 2 km at 6.8%), that is preceded and followed by othe shorter ramps and descents. The top of Fuscaldo is at 24 km to go, and the finale is quite tricky. At 7 km to go the ramp to Acquappesa starts. It's roughly just 1 km at 6%, with some steeper ramps in the secon half, but topping at 6 km to go makes it a possible key point of the race. From there on there is no proper flat, as the peloton rolls back to Guardia Piemontese Marina to tackle the final difficulty of the day, the uphill finish of Terme Luigiane, with 2 km at 5.3% and again steeper gradient at the top, as the last 700m are at 8%.

GC standings
1 Bob Jungels (Lux) Quick-Step Floors 23:22:07
2 Geraint Thomas (GBr) Team Sky 0:00:06
3 Adam Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 0:00:10
4 Domenico Pozzovivo (Ita) AG2R La Mondiale
5 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Bahrain-Merida
6 Nairo Quintana (Col) Movistar Team
7 Tom Dumoulin (Ned) Team Sunweb
8 Bauke Mollema (Ned) Trek-Segafredo
9 Tejay Van Garderen (USA) BMC Racing Team
10 Andrey Amador (CRc) Movistar Team

REBELSAFC

I think this is one for G Thomas

retalivity

Ill go with rui costa

buffalo

Postalburger in the break. Rás to Giro in two years... wonder who the future star of this year's edition will be?

Somedude9

Should be an exciting finish to this one, thankfully.

MPFGLB

Think this might be the best stage so far esp if the cross winds come into play

Cannondale should be tryinf to win these stages or Dim Data and not leaving to teh GC guys

neris

MPFGLB wrote: »

Think this might be the best stage so far esp if the cross winds come into play

Cannondale should be tryinf to win these stages or Dim Data and not leaving to teh GC guys

I think at this stage cannondale have forgotten how to win races. Wilier pushing it for Pippo to take the win

dastardly00

The breakaway have this in the bag I think. 3'50" gap with 25 km to go.
Silvan Dillier (BMC), Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo), Jasper Stuyven (Trek-Segafredo), Simone Andreetta (Bardiani CSF), and Lukas Pöstlberger (Bora-Hansgrohe).

Some agro there what happened?

I didn't know Javier Moreno was kicked off the tour after the incident with Diego Rosa the other day.

dastardly00

Deleted User wrote: »

Some agro there what happened?

Missed it myself as well

dastardly00

The final 8 km:

Poor Pedersen looked totally spent there.

dastardly00

Deleted User wrote: »

Poor Pedersen looked totally spent there.

Pedersen will be p*ssed if Stuyven doesn't win this :P

retalivity

dastardly00 wrote: »

Pedersen will be p*ssed if Stuyven doesn't win this :P

Kick in the b*lox so!

buffalo

Thought the bunch was going to get caught up with the break's cavalcade for a while there.

Nice for him to get his 1st grand tour win.

dastardly00

It was hard to grasp the difficulty of the gradient from the TV pictures... so it just looked liked everyone was pedaling very slowly in the final kilometer!

Yeah I think it was on Etna the other day you got a great side shot from the helicopter showing just steep it was as they climbed one section

Some colourful language from Jasper there