2022 Giro d'Italia to climax with hilly Verona time trial

Published November 11, 2021 03:38AM

After already publishing much of the 2022 route, organizer RCS unveiled Thursday the final, crucial stage of next year’s race, which will be a 17.1k test against the clock in Verona. With a short 9.2km TT in the opening week, it means that there is just over 26km of time trialing in the entire race.

A closing time trial has proved a popular way to finish the Giro d’Italia in recent years and it will be the fourth consecutive edition that it has been used. While Egan Bernal had an unassailable lead going into the final stage this year, the final day TT has often added a bit of drama to the end of the race.

After two years in Milan, it is the first time since 2019 that Verona will host the final stage. In total, it will be the fourth time that the Giro has reached its denouement in Verona after also doing so in 1984 and 2010.

The parcours for the 2022 concluding test will be exactly as it was three years ago, when Chad Haga beat Victor Campenaerts to the win. The 17.1km route through Verona is marked by a single climb up the Torricella Massimiliana.

While it’s not the toughest climb out there, the short ascent adds a bit of spice to the day and opens the stage win to a wider variety of TT specialists — in other words, someone other than Filippo Ganna might just ride away with the win.

In addition to Haga’s stage win, his first-ever at a grand tour, the 2019 TT saw Vincenzo Nibali claw back almost 40 seconds on Richard Carapaz, but the Ecuadorian would hold on to take the overall win. Primož Roglič also jumped ahead of Mikel Landa to claim his first grand tour podium finish.

After a weeklong build-up, the time trial is the final stage of next year’s race to be unveiled. Beginning last week, the organizers have published profiles for the grande partenza in Hungary, and the sprint, hilly, and mountain stages.

Due to the foreign start, the 2022 Giro d’Italia will start a day earlier than usual and roll out on Friday, May 6. The race will then take in an early extra rest day to allow the peloton to travel to Sicily for the first summit finish on Mount Etna.

The concluding TT follows a brutal final mountain test the day before, which takes the riders up 4,490m of climbing in just 167km of racing. The stage from Belluno finishes on the Marmolada, on the Passo Fedaia, with gradients averaging just over 7.6 percent and topping out at a leg-sapping 18 percent in the final kilometers of the climb.

The stage finishes in the thin air at over 2,000m and will push the riders to their limits in the contest for the maglia rosa. If that wasn’t enough, the riders must take on the highest point of the race — the Cima Coppi — on the Passo Pordoi.

The Marmolada is one of four major mountain summit finishes during this 2022 Giro d’Italia, with finales on Mount Etna, Blockhaus, and Cogne.

Giro d’Italia 2022 stages

Stage 1: Friday, May 6 — Budapest to Visegrád, 195km
Stage 2: Saturday, May 7 — Budapest to Budapest, 9.2km TT
Stage 3: Sunday, May 8 — Kaposvár to Balatonfüred, 201km
Rest Day
Stage 4: Tuesday, May 10 — Avola to Etna, 166km
Stage 5: Wednesday, May 11 — Catania to Messina, 172km
Stage 6: Thursday, May 12 — Palmi to Scalea, 192km
Stage 7: Friday, May 13 — Diamante to Potenza, 198km
Stage 8: Saturday, May 14 — Napoli to Napoli, 149km
Stage 9: Sunday, May 15 — Isernia to Blockhaus, 187km
Rest Day
Stage 10: Tuesday, May 17 — Pescara to Jesi, 194km
Stage 11: Wednesday, May 18 — Santarcangelo di Romagna to Reggio Emilia, 201km
Stage 12: Thursday, May 19 — Parma to Genova, 186km
Stage 13: Friday, May 20 — Sanremo to Cuneo, 187km
Stage 14: Saturday, May 21 — Santena to Torino, 183km
Stage 15: Sunday, May 22 — Rivarolo Canavese to Cogne, 177km
Rest Day
Stage 16: Tuesday, May 24 — Salò to Aprica, 200km
Stage 17: Wednesday, May 25 — Ponte di Legno to Lavarone, 165km
Stage 18: Thursday, May 26 — Borgo Valsugana to Treviso, 146km
Stage 19: Friday, May 27 — Marano Lagunare to Santuario di Castelmonte, 178km
Stage 20: Saturday, May 28 — Belluno to Marmolada (Passo Fedaia), 167km
Stage 21: Sunday, May 29 — Verona, 17.1km TT