Although the Giro d’Italia is the longest-running women’s Grand Tour on the calendar, with 34 editions to date, it has failed to move with the times in recent years. Before the advent of the Tour de France Femmes, the Giro was the most prestigious women’s stage race on the calendar purely by virtue of being the longest and most challenging. The fluctuating fortunes of the Giro have now taken a positive turn with a fresh name, proof of advanced planning and a testing course.
Previously, the poor level of organisation of the race was something of a running joke in the peloton. After the introduction of mandatory live coverage for Women’s WorldTour events in 2020 and the Giro organisers failing to comply, the race was subsequently relegated to 2.Pro level in 2021.
After that, the race was taken over by new organisers who marginally improved the state of the race and its coverage, but many of the same issues remained. Getting hold of any information – let alone a full route – more than a few weeks in advance of the race was unheard of, and the possibility of live images still felt like it was hanging in the balance. Now, men’s Giro d’Italia organisers, RCS Sport, have taken over the women’s race and will run the show from 2024 with a fresh name, the Giro d’Italia Women.
RCS already announced the route for the 2024 Giro d’Italia Women on Tuesday. It is a varied and challenging parcours that is better than many would have dared hope for.
Time trial offers Olympics preparation
The race begins with a 14.6 km individual time trial around the city of Brescia in the Lombardy region. The women’s Giro in its various iterations has traditionally opened with a team or individual time trial over the years but an ITT of this length is a new addition that will be welcomed by the specialists.
Time trials were starting to become a rare beast on the women’s calendar for a while but with the Tour de France Femmes avec Swift adding one in 2023, and now the Giro, there is an opportunity for those who excel against the clock to have their moment – and a necessity for those who want to contend for the GC to polish their time trial skills.
The route is relatively flat but there is still the possibility for some to lose time across the 14.6km course meaning that there could be gaps between GC contenders at the end of the day. Anyone hoping to take time back will have…
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