The route of the 2023 Giro d’Italia will be revealed in Milan on Monday, with next year’s Corsa Rosa clearly designed to convince Remco Evenepoel to target the maglia rosa and so delay any Tour de France ambition until 2024.
Race organisers always deny designing their race route for one specific rider but the Giro d’Italia has often favoured Vincenzo Nibali over the last decade, while the Tour de France has reduced the amount of time trials and removed a team time trial to give the French riders a chance of competing for victory.
The 2023 Giro d’Italia is expected to include close to 70 kilometres of individual time trialling, with the mountain stages acting as a counter-balance to the three time trials rather than a advantage to the climbers. That should tip the race in favour of Evenepoel but also attract other contenders such as Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers), Joao Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) and Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma).
The Giro d’Italia has often seen young riders win their first Grand Tour in Italy before targeting the Tour de France, and an Evenepoel presence and possible victory would continue that tradition and ease RCS Sport’s envy of their French rivals. A Giro d’Italia victory would be a perfect stepping stone for Evenepoel as his team develops a competitive Grand Tour set-up and squad around the talented young Belgian.
RCS Sport have already announced that the 2023 Corsa Rosa will begin with an 18.4km individual time trial along the Adriatic coast of the central Abruzzo region, with further detailed revelations suggesting there will be another time trial on the pan-flat roads of Romagna and a final 18km mountain time trial to Monte Lussari in the far northeast near Austria and Slovenia.
Business rather than the environment appears to have won out on the location of the final stage, with an initial agreement with Trieste ripped up and replaced with a more lucrative deal for a finish in the capital Rome. That means the riders and Giro caravan will face a 750km transfer by car, train or plane for a final circuit stage.
The final stage in the northeast of Italy were perhaps originally designed to temp Tadej Pogacar to attempt a Giro-Tour double in 2023 but he and UAE Team Emirates have already made it clear he will return to the Tour de France in 2023 in search of revenge and a third victory after defeat to Jonas Vingegaard and Jumbo-Visma in July.
“I would have liked to have seen Pogačar at the Giro next…
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