Canicatti > Vittoria 193.3km
Should be a straightforward sprint stage. We have a handful of quick men at this race, it should be a good fight for the win. Will Cavendish get his first for Astana?
Weather
Lots of sun and temperatures will get up to 20 degrees. The wind will increase throughout the stage and eventually get to 20km/h. It shouldn’t cause too many problems.
Finale
The road surface isn’t the best, but fairly common in this part of the world. There are three roundabouts in quick succession (3.5km, 2.8km and 1.8km to go), each one only has one side open according to the road book, so this will help the sprint teams bring some order to proceedings. Then there’s a fast left-hand turn with 1.3km to go and another with 700 to go, which opens onto the finishing straight.
Contenders
Mark Cavendish – after finishing 3rd in Scheldeprijs, he arrives with confidence, but not a sprint train. Astana are likely to look to Boaro and Martinelli to help guide in the closing kilometres, but this isn’t ideal for Cav. Too often we’ve seen him poorly positioned by his team in the closing stages of sprints, I hope it doesn’t happen again.
Elia Viviani – he’s here with the Italian track team, that means lots of power. He’ll hope this power can be put to good use in the finale, and he’ll have the experience of Filippo Fortin in position 2. Viviani hasn’t got close to a win yet this season, but this is a good chance.
Niccolò Bonifazio – another sprinter without a sprint train. Bonifazio won’t have many opportunities to ride for himself this year, he’ll be keen on trying to seize this one. He is usually good at surfing wheels; the lack of a train might not stop him from winning.
Álvaro Hodeg – after so long away from racing, I doubt we’ll see him sprinting.
Matteo Malucelli – he’s one of those guys who can pull a result out of the bag when you least expect it.
Giovani Lonardi – should be top 10, if he gets some luck he could challenge for the podium.
Filippo Fiorelli – Bardiani would love to get a win, Fiorelli should be their man. We saw a lot of them towards the end of the opening stage, they’ll aim to have a good position for the series of roundabouts and hope that their man can surprise the big names.
Blake Quick – I will avoid the obvious joke about his name, I’m too good for that. The young Aussie is fast, he’s a big contender for this stage. The team will be disappointed that Rudy Porter crashed out the race, but they still have Campbell Stewart to help with positioning in the finale. As a quality crit racer, the technical finale is good news for Quick, he’ll be confident of challenging for the win.
Prediction Time
This could get very messy with the big-name sprinters not having the best sprint trains, it’s a great chance for an upset.
I’ll take a win for Blake Quick.
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