The reactions are coming in from everyone on the 2006 Giro Route. Italian race commentator Davide Cassani calls this the race for climbers. Italian national team coach Franco Ballerini fovors Gilberto Simoni to win the mountainous Giro. Two-time winner Ivan Gotti calls the 2006 Giro a tribute to climbers.
The grand return of the Mortirolo climb and the inclusion of climbs with difficult ascents and not many descents where you can recover shows that the Giro organizers want to put on a big show…
One of the most mountainous Giros in years will no doubt favor those who aren’t quite as gravitationally challenged. Gilberto Simoni and Damiano Cunego are two names that pop into mind as favorites for the race. They are now free from each other and can be true adversaries on the road and not be torn between team orders and such. It will be a true “Battaglia Italiana” between these two in 2006. The tiny Venezualan climber Jose Rujano who nearly stole the Giro on the climb through the Col de la Finestre and Sestriere will be back for Selle Italia just before he jumps to Quick-Step. This Giro must make the fiesty climber smile with anticipation, especially since team manager Giovanni Savio brought in some Giro verterans to help guide him through the rest of the Giro. Rujano must take advantage of the most mountainous Giro is years to have a sub-130 pound man win the race.
Alessandro Petacchi (who weighs more than 130lbs) is miffed at the Giro organizers for not including too many dead-pan flat stages for AleJet to rule on. The Giro Orgs must have liked what they saw last year with Bettini and DiLuca battling out some hilly finishes so they kept that theme going. AleJet was thinking of maybe skipping the Giro and going to the Tour de France which offers up ten dead-pan flat stages for the fast-twitch crowd to feast on. Michele Bartoli who is helping AleJet with his training for Flanders and other not-so-flat races thinks that Petacchi will see that he can still rule the road as the king of sprinters in the Giro anyway. He will just have to put his son-to-be-developed climbing form to good use.
Finally, Jan Ullrich will decide by Novermber 20th if he will ride the Giro. Der Kaiser is deciding on his program for 2006 with personal coach Rudy Pevenage who told TuttoBici that there are two roads that lead to the Tour de France for Ullrich. One is the Tour of Switzerland and the other is the Giro D’Italia, they will decide which road to take in about one week. For Ullrich, the Giro may be a good road since he can get his climbing legs working on the brutal Italian climbs. Ullrich usually finds his best form at the end of the Tour de France, then goes on to show phenominal form for the rest of the year. If he rides the Giro he can get himself into his Post Tour shape ahead of schedule and mount a serious challenge to Ivan Basso for the Maillot Jaune. For Jan the road to yellow starts with pink.