Giro d'Italia

The news reports are that the cold weather is affecting planting. Certainly the corn field near me has not been planted. A close examination shows that there has been no equipment of any kind in the field since last fall.The Giro d'Italia begins tomorrow. The first 3 stages will be on the Isle of Sicily including tomorrow's seldom run team time trail which will be staged beginning in Palermo.

In a last minute decision the race organizers disinvited one of the previously invited minor Italian teams and invited instead Astana, the team of Tour de France winner Alberto Contador as well as Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Klöden, and former Discovery Channel and US Postal team director Johann Bruyneel. It will be interesting to see if Contador can produce anything approaching his form at last year's Tour. Failure to do so will lead some, including me, to conclude that he is not able to reproduce his last year's form because he rode last year's Tour dirty, every bit as dirty as the disgraced race leader, Michael Rasmussen. On a related note, last year's Giro featured another young rider who mirrored Contador's later success by climbing much better than expected and producing overall results which were completely unexpected. Andy Schleck ended up on the podium, finishing second. Second is where it appeared Contador was going to finish in le Tour before the race leader was DQ'ed. Schleck is not entered in the Giro this year. Very curious, fast rising young star, second in last year's race but is not able to make his team's start list this year.