The 2007 Giro d'Italia was the 90th running of the Giro d'Italia, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It took place from 12 May to 3 June 2007. The race began in Sardinia and finished in Milan, and featured five mountain top finishes, of which one was an individual time trial. The race also visited France and Austria in three stages.
Danilo Di Luca of the team won the race, with Andy Schleck from and Eddy Mazzoleni from rounding out the podium. Schleck also won the youth classification, which featured in the Giro for the first time since 1994. Di Luca's team dominated the overall classification, holding the race leader's pink jersey for 17 of the 21 stages.
During the race, Alessandro Petacchi tested positive for elevated levels of salbutamol at a doping control on 23 May, after winning Stage 11. Petacchi has a medical exemption to use salbutamol in the treatment of asthma, but the concentration of the drug in his urine sample from this control was above the therapeutically accepted level. Though the Italian Cycling Federation originally refused to punish him, the Italian National Olympic Committee appealed the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, resulting in a suspension for the rider and forfeiture of all his results from the Giro.
Teams
The Giro, along with the season's other Grand Tours (the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España), was one of several events run in 2007 as a UCI ProTour event but without a ProTour license. This meant that while ProTour points were awarded in the race, the organizers were not obligated to invite the 20 ProTour teams. Nineteen of the twenty ProTour teams, being the exception, were invited, with three UCI Professional Continental teams rounding out the event's 22-team peloton. Each team entered nine riders, so the race began with 198 in total.
The 22 teams who took part in the race were:
Pre-race favorites
In the months leading up to the Giro, headlines centered on defending champion Ivan Basso. After having been removed from 's start list for the 2006 Tour de France due to his apparent involvement in the Operación Puerto doping case, Basso and Team CSC mutually agreed on the termination of his contract with them. Days later, Basso appeared to be cleared of any connection to Puerto, as the Italian Cycling Federation (FCI) shelved his case, and he signed with . He rode part of the 2007 season with Discovery, and had intended to seek overall victory both in this Giro and in the 2007 Tour de France with his new team. In April 2007, Basso's case was re-opened by the FCI, a step rarely taken on cases formally shelved. Facing further investigations into his involvement with the doping ring, team Discovery asked him to stop racing late in April. Shortly afterward, just two weeks before the Giro was to begin, Basso terminated his contract with Discovery, meaning the Giro started without its defending champion. Basso subsequently admitted to planning on doping in the 2006 Tour, and the FCI handed him a two-year suspension, with credit for time already served in 2006 after he was first connected to the doping ring. Paolo Bettini, the reigning world champion, wore bib number one in Basso's place.
Basso's removal left wide open the possibilities for overall victory in this Giro. Four former Giro winners started this race – Damiano Cunego, Paolo Savoldelli, Gilberto Simoni, and Stefano Garzelli – and they were expected to be among the favorites. Simoni's team was noted to contain many strong climbers, including Riccardo Riccò and Leonardo Piepoli. The passage of the Giro over Monte Zoncolan, where Simoni won a stage en route to overall victory in the 2003 Giro d'Italia, was also noted as a factor in his favor. Classics specialist Danilo Di Luca of was also named as a contender, chiefly because of his strong team. Further riders named as contenders included Pietro Caucchioli and Yaroslav Popovych.
The most high-profile sprinters lined up to begin the 2007 Giro were Alessandro Petacchi and Robbie McEwen. They, along with countrymen Mario Cipollini and Baden Cooke, had had a back-and-forth rivalry for sprinting supremacy that had gone back several years but had been stunted in 2006 when Petacchi missed most of the season, including all but the first three stages of the Giro, due to a fractured kneecap sustained from a crash. One pre-race analysis viewed Petacchi's 2007 Giro and season as a chance at redemption for him. Other fast men in the race noted to be contenders in the flat stages included two-time points classification winner Bettini, Danilo Napolitano, and Graeme Brown.
Route and stages Race director Angelo Zomegnan commented that the route was designed to be easier than that of the extremely climbing-intensive 2006 Giro. The Giro's twenty-one stages were divided into the following classifications: three time trials (one team and two individual), eleven flat or undulating stages (officially there was no distinction made between flat and undulating), four intermediate stages, and three mountain stages. The race began with a team time trial on the island of Sardinia. This was followed by two flat stages and an unusually early rest day to transfer from Sardinia to Italy's mainland. The riders transferred by plane while the Giro caravan, race officials and team cars made the trip by boat. The final stage, as was tradition, was a flat, mostly ceremonial road stage to Milan, finishing with ten circuits on the Corso Venezia of the Via Montenapoleone.
There were three stages that began or ended outside Italy. Stage 12, the first high mountain stage, ended at the French city Briançon, a frequent destination for the Tour de France. The 16th stage ended at Lienz in Austria, and the 17th began there.
Five stages ended with climbs. Stage 4, the first intermediate stage, ended at Montevergine di Mercogliano at . The tenth stage, also classified intermediate, had a less imposing final climb of , but it was nonetheless expected to change the race's overall standings as it was very long it had numerous small climbs. Stage 13 was a climbing time trial, to Santuario di Oropa at , with gradients on the climb reaching as high as 13%. Two stages later was perhaps the race's most difficult stage, featuring four major climbs and ending at at Tre Cime di Lavaredo. The last mountaintop arrival was in the seventeenth stage, and featured one of the hardest climbs in the world, Monte Zoncolan. Though the summit of this climb was lesser than some other peaks visited in the race, at , its gradients were crushing, with the steepest stretches reaching over 20% incline. Though the number of mountain stages was small, it was nonetheless expected that it would take a strong climber to win the race.
+ Stage characteristics and winnersStageDateCourseDistanceTypeWinner112 MayCaprera to La Maddalena Team time trial213 MayTempio Pausania to Bosa Flat or undulating stage314 MayBarumini to Cagliari Flat or undulating stage15 May Rest day416 MaySalerno to Montevergine di Mercogliano Intermediate stage517 MayTeano to Frascati Flat or undulating stage618 MayTivoli to Spoleto Intermediate stage719 MaySpoleto to Scarperia Flat or undulating stage820 MayBarberino di Mugello to Fiorano Modenese Flat or undulating stage921 MayReggio Emilia to Lido di Camaiore Flat or undulating stage1022 MayCamiaore to Santuario Nostra Signora della Guardia Intermediate stage1123 MaySerravalle Scrivia to Pinerolo Flat or undulating stage1224 MayScalenghe to Briançon (France) Mountain stage1325 MayBiella to Santuario di Oropa Individual time trial1426 MayCantù to Bergamo Intermediate stage1527 MayTrento to Tre Cime di Lavaredo Mountain stage28 MayRest day1629 MayAgordo to Lienz (Austria) Flat or undulating stage1730 MayLienz (Austria) to Monte Zoncolan Mountain stage1831 MayUdine to Riese Pio X Flat or undulating stage191 JuneTreviso to Terme di Comano Flat or undulating stage202 JuneBardolino to Verona Individual time trial213 JuneVestone to MilanFlat or undulating stage Total
Race overview
The Giro began with a team time trial on the island of Sardinia. The winning team was , but due to unusual stage-ending tactics, it was Enrico Gasparotto and not team leader Danilo Di Luca who took the first pink jersey. Gasparotto faced intense questioning from his teammates and the media after not yielding first position to his team's captain, as is usual practice in a team time trial. Gasparotto yielded the jersey to Di Luca after stage 2, when Di Luca finished higher-placed in the mass finish, but took it back again after stage 3 when he contested the sprint and finished eighth. Finally, after stage 4, the six-way tie involving the Liquigas riders who finished together in the team time trial was broken, as Di Luca won the stage into Montevergine and took the pink jersey again.
Di Luca held the race lead until the conclusion of stage 6, which was decided by a breakaway. Luis Felipe Laverde and Marco Pinotti were the last members of a five-man morning breakaway still together at the finish. Since Pinotti started the day better-placed in the overall classification and became the new race leader because of their time gap over the peloton, he allowed Laverde to take the stage win. Laverde took the green jersey as mountains classification leader after the stage. The next three stages were flat and contested among sprinters and breakaways. This meant Pinotti was able to maintain his race lead with little difficulty, until stage 10, the Giro's next intermediate stage. The race's overall contenders showed themselves on this stage, with Leonardo Piepoli putting in a decisive attack from the summit of the Santuario Nostra Signora della Guardia to claim victory by 19 seconds over Di Luca. Pinotti finished more than four minutes back, and surrendered the pink jersey to Di Luca's teammate Andrea Noè, who was tenth on the stage. At age 38, Noè was the oldest rider in the Giro and the oldest ever to lead a Grand Tour. Di Luca took the green jersey after this stage, his second stint in the maglia verde to go along with his two in pink. 's Andy Schleck took the white jersey after this stage by finishing third, after Di Luca passed him for second in the final kilometer.
Stage 12 into Briançon in France was the Giro's first high mountain stage, and it shook up the standings for the final time. Di Luca took the stage win, twice attacking from an elite group of five that had made the climb together. As Noè finished nearly ten minutes behind, Di Luca took the pink jersey for a third time, while still holding the green jersey. As Di Luca concentrated on winning the race overall, Piepoli took the green jersey after stage 15, the race's queen stage, topping two of that stage's climbs in first position. His lead in the mountains classification quickly became unassailable, and he won the jersey in Milan. It was also on this stage that 's Eddy Mazzoleni distinguished himself as a podium contender, taking a minute and a half out of Di Luca to move into second overall. Schleck lost time to Di Luca and Mazzoleni, but gained time over other riders in the top of the overall standings and stood third overall.