Giro d'Italia RSS

The racing season is well and truly underway. For many the sun has arrived, the weather’s improving (even here in north of England where I’m sat writing this). We’ve had the classics, the Tour of California, and now the Giro d’Italia is in full swing. I like a huge amount of cyclists out there, will be balancing work, getting out on the bike and catching the racing on TV. You may be running a sly second tab on your work computer streaming the latest stage of the Giro or Tour of Norway, in awe of the pros ripping each other apart in some of the best cycling locations across the globe. This viewing gets me excited, keen to hit the road and to get more miles in my legs and to top up that cyclist tan. The aim may be to replicate the actions of the professional, or at least try to. For me its nice to be finally able to pack away the winter kit (hopefully for the rest of the year) and dig out last years summer kit. The winter kits seen loads of action, in some grim weather. Now its time for my Castelli Bodypaint shorts to yet again get used, ...

Daniel Martin enters this year’s Giro d’Italia as the great outsider of the GC. He openly admits that he still hasn’t proved that he can perform regularly with the very best over three weeks of racing and this makes his performance very uncertain. At the same time, he has mostly shined in one-day races and on shorter climbs where he can make use of his explosive climbing skills while he has had a harder time in the high mountains. This year’s Giro will obviously be decided in the final week which is loaded with long, regular climbs and it is another question how Martin will handle those strains. Over the last year, the Garmin rider has stepped up his level massively and his performance in the last two editions of Liege-Bastogne-Liege and last year’s Il Lombardia prove that he is now one the world’s leading contenders for the hilly classics. As a grand tour contender, however, he is almost a completely blank page. He has already done six three-week races but so far he has rarely had a focus on the overall standings. Instead, he has always underlined his approach of treating the races as 21 consecutive one-day classics and ...

Every rider at the Giro has a different story to tell, and each of these images paints a tale of its own.

Team Garmin-Sharp, winners of the 2012 Giro d’Italia, today announced its much-anticipated 2013 roster. The squad is headlined by, and built around, defending champion Ryder Hesjedal.

No defending champion has won the Giro d’Italia since Miguel Indurain in 1993, but defending champion Ryder Hesjedal could pull it off.