Charting the Giro: Here’s how the race looks with six stages remaining

Charting the Giro: Here's how the race looks with six stages remaining

Before the final chapter of the Giro d’Italia begins, let’s take a moment to reflect on the ‘week’ that’s been. There’s been plenty of action since the second rest day: Biniam Girmay’s historic stage win (and bizarre departure from the race), some wonderful breakaway stage wins, and Simon Yates adding to his tally of career stage wins. But there are plenty more stories unfolding at the 105th Giro d’Italia beyond those we can see with a quick glimpse at the results sheet.

You might have seen Cam Harris’s charts here at CyclingTips before. He’s done them for previous Grand Tours, and he also broke down the first nine days of this year’s Giro for us last week. He’s back again now with a bunch of charts that show how the Giro has evolved to this point. Head on down the page to take a look. And if you like what Cam does, be sure to check out more of his work over at his website, bikechart.cc.

Let’s get into it.

Stage winners by country

Let’s start with something simple, but instructive. We wrote after stage 9 that Italy was yet to win a stage of its home Grand Tour and, well, that certainly changed in the days that followed. The host nation is now tied at the top of the leaderboard.

Stage winners by team

In a similar vein, the following pie chart shows which teams have had success at this year's Giro. Arnaud Démare's three stage wins have Groupama-FDJ in the lead. Of note: that's 10 teams with a stage win of the 22 on the startlist. With just six stages left, time is running out for the remaining 12 teams to get on the board.

GC contenders time swarm

Alright, onto the GC. The following chart shows the road the top GC contenders have taken to get to their current placings, after 15 stages. The y axis denotes the time gaps between riders, so the bigger the gap between dots on the far right, the bigger the time gap. Hover over a particular line to see that rider's trajectory.

Note how stages 10 to 13 didn't change all that much at the top of the GC, but stage 14 offered quite the shake-up. That day Juan Pedro López fell out of pink and the time gaps between the top 10 started to grow.

GC swarm

The following chart shows the fortunes of the entire field, with the y axis showing GC position throughout the race. Again, hovering over a line will show that rider's trajectory throughout the Giro.

Note how the bottom line on the graph comes up as the race goes on – as you can probably guess, that shows more and more riders abandoning the race. It's also interesting that while stage 13 didn't change the very top of the GC much, it certainly caused a shake-up lower down. Stages 14 and 15 saw quite a bit more shuffling on GC too, but interestingly, the bottom handful of riders don't seem to move much.

GC bar graph

Here's a wonderfully dynamic way of visualising how the top of the GC has evolved over the past 15 days.

GC timeline

And here's another way of looking at it.

Points classification

You can see below just how dominant Démare has been in the points classification. You can see the impact his three stage wins had on his points tally – stages 5, 6 and 13. The only way he won't win the maglia ciclamino come Verona is if he doesn't finish the Giro.

KOM

The battle for the maglia azzurra is quite a bit closer. Diego Rosa led for several days there in the second week, but Koen Bouwman is now back in front, as of stage 15.

It's close though – just 17 points between the two – and with so much climbing still to come, it's not impossible for the GC contenders to get in the mix too. You can see Jai Hindley and Richard Carapaz there in third and fifth. Meanwhile Giulio Ciccone's win on stage 15 also puts him in the conversation. This is a battle to watch in the coming days.

Time trialists

And finally, here's a look at the trajectory of some of the TT specialists in the field. Why is this of interest? Because we sometimes see TT specialists taking it easy in the days leading up to a time trial, to give themselves the best shot at a strong performance.

There's a time trial to end the Giro this coming weekend. If you're looking to predict a winner for that stage, this could be a chart worth keeping an eye on. Head over to bikechart.cc for daily updates.

Thanks again to Cam for all his hard work and for allowing us to reproduce his charts here.

What else can you see in the charts above? What else will you be keeping an eye on in the days to come?