The Giro d’Italia is starting today, without the customary discussions as to who will win the race overall. That seems to be (almost literally) set in stone already as Colnago have even revealed a golden bike for the prospect of Tadej Pogacar’s victory.
With all that in mind, why not look back to the Grand Tour that had an equal level of dominance, to what is expected from Tadej Pogacar in the coming three weeks – the Giro d’Italia 2006.
With Lance Armstrong’s first retirement in 2005, the 2006 season was the start of a new era in cycling. Coming into the season Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich, the two riders who had finished behind Armstrong in the Tour 2005, were seen as the big favourites for the overall victory in France. Both were also on the startlist of the Giro d’Italia but with different expectations.
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Jan Ullrich rode the Giro fully in preparation for the Tour after a difficult off-season, plagued by a knee injury. Ivan Basso on the other hand was considered one of the main favourites for the race. The other contenders were the usual candidates at the Giro d’Italia in those years:
- The Giro winner of 2004, Damiano Cunego, was considered the top favourite in 2006, due to his remarkable shape, which had helped him win 5 races in the early part of the season.
- Saunier Duval’s Gilberto Simoni, who had an unbelievable track record: 2 overall victories and 4 additional podiums at the Giro in the previous 7 years. Only in 2002 he had to abandon after testing positive for cocaine while 3rd in the General Classification.
- The defending champion, Paolo Savoldelli, who was the main hope of the American Discovery Channel team, after Lance Armstrong’s retirement.
The race started, as so often during those years, with a prologue which was utterly dominated by Paolo Savoldelli. Over just 6,2 kilometers, Savoldelli put 11 seconds into the closest challenger and over 20 seconds into all the main contenders for the Maglia Rosa. A perfect start for the defending champion, who had been unsure about his form after abandoning the Tour de Romandie just a week earlier.
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The next few days were rather uneventful for the GC riders, with two sprint victories for Robbie McEwen and a win for Stefan Schumacher on a punchy finish, before the important Team Timetrial. Ivan Basso’s CSC team managed to secure the win there, just one second ahead of T-Mobile with Serhiy Honchar, who took the Maglia Rosa. Discovery Channel with Savoldelli limited the losses and finished 3rd, 39 seconds behind CSC. Cunego’s Lampre and Simoni’s Saunier Duval had much worse days, losing 1’04min and 1’26min respectively. This left Basso and Savoldelli in the best GC position, with a sizeable gap on the other contenders.
After two more transition stages won by McEwen and Rik Verbrugghe, the riders finally hit the mountains. Stage 7 featured a summit finish on Passo Lanciano. The rest of the stage was basically completely flat. Not exactly ideal for the biggest gaps, but the perfect condition for high watts. Unipuerto stages are historically rather rare in the Giro, but this edition featured four such stages as the first four mountain stages, before moving to the traditional multi mountain Dolomites stages in the final week.
It was Basso’s CSC team that set a hard tempo on Passo Lanciano, quickly detaching the two T-Mobile riders Jan Ullrich and Maglia Rosa Serhiy Honchar. Piepoli increased the tempo for Simoni on the steepest gradients, which led to Savoldelli dropping with still 7 kilometers of climbing left. Cunego then put in a big acceleration to test his rivals. Basso slowly bridged, without spiking his power too much, before dropping Cunego off the wheel within just 30 seconds of catching him. Basso continued like this until the finish, climbing seated almost the entire time.
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Basso produced 6,44ᵉw/kg for 31’55min on the climb, which was enough to put 30 seconds into Cunego and the surprising Jose Enrique Gutierrez of Phonak, who had never climbed at this level before. Simoni, supported by Piepoli, lost over 1 minute, while Savoldelli shipped over 2 minutes. This left Basso in the Maglia Rosa with a gap of over 90 seconds on the closest challenger after just the first mountain stage. The two following two transition stages won by Tomas Vaitkus and Franco Pellizotti did not change anything about that either.
Jan Ullrich’s victory on the Stage 10 Individual Time Trial was quite a suprise and a good sign ahead of the Tour, but Basso taking second place just 28 seconds behind was perhaps even more surprising. The Maglia Rosa even caught Damiano Cunego, whom he distanced by over 5 minutes on the completely flat 50 kilometre course. Savoldelli and Gutierrez could limit their losses to 51 seconds and 1’24min behind Basso respectively, which left Gutierrez second and Savoldelli fourth in the General Classification. Honchar was still sitting in third. Simoni also had a disappointing ride, losing nearly 4 minutes to Basso. The contenders still showed hope to beat Basso however, as he had exploded in the final week of the previous Giro.
On the following day, there was a large breakaway which helped Wladimir Belli and Emmanuele Sella jump into the top 5 overall as Joan Sebastian Horrach took the stage win. Honchar lost nearly 7 minutes after a hard crash, which made him fall out of the GC even before the following mountain stage.
Just like Stage 7, this was another completely flat stage before the final climb: the Colle San Carlo, on which Richard Carapaz would conquer the Maglia Rosa in 2019. On this day however, the Maglia Rosa was not able to be conquered, as Ivan Basso was once again the strongest rider. He attacked early on the final climb and only Leonardo Piepoli, going for the stage win, was able to follow the tremendous pace of the Maglia Rosa. Basso did most of the work as the other riders were just trying to limit their ever-increasing losses to him. In terms of watts, Ivan Basso rode at 6,49ᵉw/kg for 34 minutes – a clear improvement on his already incredible performance on Passo Lanciano.
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Gutierrez and Simoni crested 1’25min behind the leading duo, but massively decreased the gap to Basso on the rainy descent to La Thuile, where the Maglia Rosa had to let go of Piepoli, who won the stage. Descending seemed to be Basso’s only weakness during this race and it played a key role in a later stage as well. In the end Basso only took 35 seconds on Gutierrez and Simoni on this stage, which did not change the fact that his gap in the General Classification was absolutely massive.
After stage wins by Luis Felipe Laverde and Paolo Bettini, it was time for another summit finish. Just like on the previous mountain stages, there were no major difficulties before the final climb, which certainly helped Basso to reach absolutely mindblowing watts once again. In fact, his ascent to Monte Bondone on this day will remain the greatest feat of his career. CSC set the tempo for a large part of the climb, before Piepoli forced it even more, putting several of the main contenders into big problems. Finally, with 7 kilometers to go, Simoni’s expected attack followed. An attack that ‘Il Terrible’ Ivan Basso followed with tremendous ease and without leaving the saddle. He worked with Simoni for a few minutes before saying ciao a tutti, rising from his saddle for what felt like the only time on the entire climb and leaving the Saunier Duval leader behind like a cyclotourist. The Italian commentators, completely in disbelief, kept comparing Basso to the recently retired Lance Armstrong: “Lui fuoriclasse, stesso Lance Armstrong” (“He is unequalled, like Lance Armstrong”). Simoni was even deemed “I primi degli umani” (“The first of the humans”).
During this ascent, Basso produced 6,65ᵉw/kg for 46’16min. A performance that has to be considered, at the very least, a top 3 climbing performance of the century next to Contador’s ascent of Verbier. Naturally this climbing record up Monte Bondone has not and will never be broken. In fact, Mikel Landa achieved his, up to that point, best ever climbing performance on Monte Bondone in the Giro del Trentino 2014. His time was just under four and a half minutes slower than Ivan Basso’s.
Simoni, Piepoli and Gutierrez lost around 1:30min with the next closest rider losing 2’40min. Savoldelli shipped 3’27min and Cunego was left 4’37min behind. Unbelievably large gaps for such an ‘easy’ mountain stage. This left Basso with a modest gap of 5’27min on Gutierrez and over 9 minutes over Simoni and Savoldelli in the General Classification.
The following stage had to be altered due to bad weather and because of this ended up being another unipuerto finish, this time on the Passo Furcia. Basso seemed content to just defend this time around, following the decisive attack by Leonardo Piepoli like he was on a training ride. Just like in La Thuile, Piepoli took the stage win, with Basso extending his lead in the general classification. The following transition stage was once again won by Gerolsteiner’s Stefan Schumacher, before the riders truly reached the Dolomites.
Stage 18 finally delivered a ‘real’ mountain stage: 224 kilometers over Faulenza, Fedaia, Pordoi and a finish on Passo Pellegrino. The action only really kicked off on the final climb however, as Juan Manuel Garate won the stage from the breakaway. He had come to the line with CSC’s Jens Voigt, who decided to give the stage to Garate as the Spaniard had done the majority of the work.
In the GC group, Saunier Duval was on the attack once again. Piepoli had set a tremendous tempo to set up Simoni’s attack. Basso followed easily and worked with Simoni but did not see the need to put in an acceleration himself. This move cemented Simoni’s podium place by distancing Savoldelli. Basso’s unwillingness to attack meant the watts were not stratospheric on this altitude climb however. 45’01min at ‘only’ 5’91ᵉw/kg for the Maglia Rosa. A more than impressive level after such a demanding stage, but rather uninspiring compared to Basso’s other exploits during this race.
The following stage featured Passo Tonale, Passo Gavia and the fearsome Mortirolo. Not only the final mountain stage but certainly also the queen stage. And the events of this stage also were the most controversial of the entire race. Saunier Duval already set a high tempo on the earlier parts of the stage, but the action only kicked off on the Mortirolo, where Inigo Cuesta of CSC set a high tempo. After just 3 kilometers of climbing, Basso attacked twice, shaking off everyone but the ever-present Gibbo Simoni. The two decided to settle into a rhythm and work together. Their climbing styles, polar opposites – Simoni mostly out of the saddle, dancing on the pedals and visibly on the limit. Basso meanwhile riding even the steepest gradients seated, with a body language as if he was on a training ride. The two reached the top together, over a minute ahead of Gutierrez, having pushed 5,99ᵉw/kg for 44’30min.
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Basso, a bad descender as seen on the stage to la Thuile, was quickly put on the limit by Simoni’s speed downhill. Basso therefore begged Simoni to not drop him on the descent. Simoni, expecting the stage win in return, slowed down and took Maglia Rosa with him to the bottom of the descent. The ruthless Basso however decided to ride full gas also on the last rise to Aprica, finally dropping a tired Simoni off the wheel with 3 kilometers to go. In these last 3 kilometers at around 3%, Basso still put a mindblowing 1’17 minutes into Simoni. He celebrated his third stage win in the race by holding up a picture of his son. Gutierrez and Cunego came in at 2’51min which meant that the Spaniard kept second overall ahead of Simoni. His previously best result at a Grand Tour had been 25th. These three riders remained the only ones to finish within 6 minutes of Basso on this stage as Savoldelli and Piepoli came in at 6’03min.
Simoni was furious in the interview, “Basso said to me, ‘Don’t drop me on the descent’, so I thought I had a chance to win today; if I had thought Basso was going to do that in the finale, I would have played my cards differently,” he explained.
To the dissatisfication of Basso and his manager, the legendary Bjarne Riis, the 2003 Giro champion also described the Maglia Rosa’s performance as ‘extra-terrestrial’: “I’ve never seen anyone dominate [like Basso], never seen anyone that strong! He seems like an extra-terrestrial.”
The climbing performances of Ivan Basso during this Giro d’Italia certainly were special by any standard. In the 21st century only Alberto Contador (Tour de France 2009), Jonas Vingegaard (Tour de France 2023), Roberto Heras (Vuelta a España 2000) and arguably Lance Armstrong (Tour de France 2000/2001) reached a comparable climbing level over a whole Grand Tour.
Great to read about these older races! Thanks!
6.65 w/kg for 46 minutes is just wild and arguably he couldve gone faster … 😐