Giro d italia passes through Primiero

As i mentioned a few days ago the Giro d Italia is spending a couple of days in the Trento region and passes though the sprint and long areas. Stage 4 took riders up to San Martino di Castozza, a site within the embargoed area. From the coverage i saw the terrain looks amazing. Steeper than i anticipated with huge vistas out across the valley to the sheer cliffs all around. If you would live to watch some coverage check out the Giro page on www.steephill.tv (takes a bit of trial and error to get a good feed but the highlights on Rai TV were the best i saw).

Stage 5 started from San Martino di Castrozza. It took riders down to Bolzano, which is the city Greta and I are staying in for our initial training then back out into the Dolomites. I have some photos below of the stage. Looks like there is still a substantial amount of snow around up the top of the passes. The forests are also looking quite brown up high, no doubt as it rapidly warms up this will disappear and leave the beautiful green environment we have been hoping for.

For those of you that are interested Danilo di Luca of Team Lpr won stage 4 in a large sprint. While stage 5 proved decisive, with Denis Menchov from Rabobank taking the win ahead of a select group of favourites. Lance Armstrong, Damiano Cuenego and Gilberto Simoni all missed the elite group on stage 5 so have an uphill battle to make it to the podium. Di Luca is currently in pink with Thomas Lovkivist in 2nd on general classification. (www.cyclingnews.com for more if you are interested).






I think that the top two photos are from within the embargoed area for the long distance. I could be wrong, but looks very similar to what i saw on the live coverage as they were going through.

Also who recognises the guy in the Viking Horns with no shirt on at 1.12 in this video on you tube?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7Vte4Gu_Q8