The 2009 Giro d'Italia began on 9 May, with Stage 11 occurring on 20 May. The first stage, like it had been since 2007, was a team time trial, a stage where each member of the team raced together against the clock. Like most cycling Grand Tours do, the beginning of the 2009 Giro included a string of flat stages that were contested by sprinters. These stages were contested by Alessandro Petacchi and Mark Cavendish, among others, with Petacchi in victory becoming one of the only riders to defeat Cavendish in a sprint in the 2009 season.
At the end of the race's first week and beginning of its second were three hilly medium-mountain stages. These stages took the Giro through Austria and Switzerland before returning to Italy. Each of these stages took more than five hours to complete, and the rain that fell each day combined with the difficulties presented by the numerous ascents and descents made the courses potentially unsafe in the riders' opinion. This opinion was perhaps validated by the life-threatening injuries sustained by Pedro Horrillo in the eighth stage after he crashed while descending a mountain. While the ninth stage was meant to be a showy criterium in celebration of this being the 100th anniversary of the Giro d'Italia, the riders collectively protested the safety conditions of that stage and the ones before it. This meant it would be neutralized, with every rider receiving the same finishing time as the stage winner regardless of when they finished.
The tenth stage was the longest of this year's Giro, and one of its most mountainous. It, along with a stage later in the race, were both called the race's queen stage, its most difficult stage. Danilo Di Luca won this stage to pad his overall lead going into the second half of the Giro.
LegendJerseys appearing in the table on the left of the page indicate those worn by the cyclist during the particular stage, while those appearing in the table on the right of the page indicate those awarded to the cyclist after the stage. Denotes the leader of the General classification Denotes the leader of the Mountains classification Denotes the leader of the Points classification Denotes the leader of the Young rider classification s.t. indicates that the rider crossed the finish line in the same group as the one receiving the time above him, and was therefore credited with the same finishing time.
Stage 1
9 May 2009 — Lido (Venice), (team time trial)
The 2009 Giro began, as it had since 2007, with a team time trial (TTT). The ride over a perfectly flat course in Venice decided who would wear the first pink jersey.
was the first team to ride the course, and wound up being the stage winners. They all finished together, which is relatively uncommon (especially for a winning team: only , which took the course nearly a minute slower, managed to also have all nine riders cross the finish line together). , who had said previously it was their goal to replicate their TTT victory from the 2008 Giro d'Italia, finished officially 6 seconds back of , but they had only the minimum of 5 riders finishing together (the team's time is taken for the fifth rider to cross the line). As the first rider to cross the line, Mark Cavendish was awarded the first pink jersey as general classification (GC) leader; he was also awarded the white jersey as youth classification leader.
Stage 1 result TeamTime1 21' 50" 2 + 6"3 + 13"4 + 22"5 + 27"6 + 35"7 + 38"8 + 40"9 + 42"10 + 49"General classification after stage 1 RiderTeamTime 1 21' 50" 2 + 0" 3 + 0" 4 + 0" 5 + 0" 6 + 0" 7 + 0" 8 + 0" 9 + 0" 10 + 6"
Stage 2 10 May 2009 — Jesolo to Trieste,
This stage was very flat. It had only one categorized climb, at low elevation, near the end. This climb award the first points in the mountains classification and thus, the first green jersey awarded to its leader. The riders took three laps of an finishing circuit in Trieste, with the points for the climb taken on their second time over the hill at Montebello.
Leonardo Scarselli was free of the main field for most of the stage after escaping early in the morning. The bunch caught him with to race, though. David García won the climb in Trieste to become the first wearer of the green jersey, and Alessandro Petacchi won the group sprint to the line, narrowly edging out race leader Mark Cavendish.
A crash on the third pass over the Montebello hill meant the field was broken, with only 51 riders together for the sprint finish. The rest of the peloton finished 13 seconds back, and since this crash occurred outside from the finish line, all time lost stood as lost. Notables among those who lost 13 seconds were Levi Leipheimer and Ivan Basso.
Stage 2 result RiderTeamTime 1 3h 43' 07" 2 s.t. 3 s.t. 4 s.t. 5 s.t. 6 s.t. 7 s.t. 8 s.t. 9 s.t. 10 s.t.General classification after stage 2 RiderTeamTime 1 4h 04' 43" 2 + 14" 3 + 14" 4 + 14" 5 + 14" 6 + 16" 7 + 16" 8 + 20" 9 + 20" 10 + 27"
Stage 3 11 May 2009 — Grado to Valdobbiadene,
This stage was also flat, and ended in a mass sprint.
A five rider breakaway, which had a maximum advantage of seven minutes, took the points at the one intermediate sprint and the one categorised climb of the day, but were caught with some remaining. A number of crashes occurred starting at the remaining mark, and a series of attempted breaks meant that the peloton was fragmented, and Alessandro Petacchi took a second successive stage from a depleted group sprint.
The biggest victim of the repeated crashes was leader Christian Vande Velde, who had to retire from the Giro with a broken rib and a hairline fracture of his pelvis. The crashes also made it so Mark Cavendish was not with the main peloton as it approached the finish line; he came to within 15 seconds of the group before abandoning the attempt to reach them, and essentially conceding the pink jersey. Petacchi's second straight stage win gave him the race leadership.
Stage 3 result RiderTeamTime 1 4h 45' 27" 2 s.t. 3 s.t. 4 s.t. 5 s.t. 6 s.t. 7 s.t. 8 s.t. 9 s.t. 10 s.t.General classification after stage 3 RiderTeamTime 1 8h 50' 06" 2 + 8" 3 + 18" 4 + 18" 5 + 31" DSQ + 40" 7 + 44" 8 + 44" 9 + 45" 10 + 52"
Stage 4 12 May 2009 — Padova to San Martino di Castrozza,
This was the first mountain stage of the Giro, with a high climb coming at and a mountain finish at San Martino di Castrozza.
A group of 6 riders escaped after just . This group comprised Serafín Martínez, Francesco Bellotti, Davide Viganò, Ian Stannard, Francesco De Bonis, and Jens Voigt. They attained a maximum advantage of six and a half minutes, and with a healthy pace of through the stage's first three hours, it appeared possible that one of them would be the stage winner. The pace caught up with the group as they reached the foot of the day's final climb, and only Voigt and Bellotti remained together as the climb began. Two kilometers into the climb, Voigt attacked again and tried to solo to victory over the last .
The top GC men in the peloton and the specialist climbers formed a chase group that overhauled Voigt in the final . The attacks of Colombian climber Mauricio Soler had been responsible for driving this group to catch the remnants of the breakaway, and he attacked again in the final , quickly getting a gap over the competition and appearing poised for the stage win. As Soler had been the one who caused the crash that kept Mark Cavendish from potentially defending the pink jersey the day before, his combativeness on this stage was described as his "redemption". 2007 Giro d'Italia winner Danilo Di Luca timed his sprint to the line just right and overtook Soler for the victory. Sixteen riders finished with the same time as Di Luca, ten more were six seconds back, and a further 26 were inside a minute of his winning time. Thomas Lövkvist, who finished in the same group as Di Luca, took a narrow lead in the overall classification after the stage. However, Di Luca later tested positive for EPO and was stripped of his victory. The stage win was subsequently awarded to Stefano Garzelli, the runner-up.
Stage 4 result RiderTeamTime DSQ Di Luca tested positive for EPO during the Giro. Subsequently, all his results were declared void. 1 4h 15' 04" DSQ s.t. 4 s.t. 5 s.t. 6 s.t. 7 s.t. 8 s.t. 9 s.t. 10 s.t.General classification after stage 4 RiderTeamTime 1 13h 05' 28" DSQ + 2" 3 + 6" 4 + 26" 5 + 26" 6 + 28" DSQ + 32" 8 + 42" 9 + 42" 10 + 49"
Stage 5 13 May 2009 — San Martino di Castrozza to Alpe di Siusi,
This was one of the shortest road race stages in the 2009 Giro, but its profile was quite unusual. It saw the riders start where they ended the previous day, on the mountaintop at San Martino di Castrozza, climb some for a categorized climb at Passo Rolle, and then descend over before climbing most of that distance right back for another mountaintop finish at Alpe di Siusi.
A seven-man breakaway was clear over the Passo Rolle climb and took a maximum lead of four and a half minutes in the valley between peaks. Giovanni Visconti was briefly race leader on the road, as he began the stage just under three minutes behind pink jersey wearer Thomas Lövkvist in the General Classification. The peloton, paced by Liquigas, caught them without about left to race, leading the way for Sylwester Szmyd and then Ivan Basso to try to fracture the field before the finish. Six riders were able to keep his pace to the finish, with Denis Menchov the first to Alpe di Suisi for the stage win. The other six in the leading group kept close to the stage winner, with only Carlos Sastre losing more than ten seconds. Danilo Di Luca became the new race leader after his second place on the stage.
Damiano Cunego, Lance Armstrong and Stefano Garzelli, all of whom had been considered as possible favorites for overall victory in the Giro, all lost more than two minutes on this stage, being unable to take Liquigas' pace on the way up to Alpe di Suisi. As they, along with Michael Rogers, had shown weakness on the climb, one report named as the only remaining possibilities for Giro champion Menchov, Di Luca, Lövkvist, Basso, Levi Leipheimer, and Sastre. The victory gave Menchov stage wins in all three Grand Tours for his career, and his team its first ever Giro d'Italia stage win.
Stage 5 result RiderTeamTime 1 3h 15' 24" DSQ + 2" 3 + 5" 4 s.t. 5 + 9" 6 s.t. 7 + 19" 8 + 22" 9 s.t. 10 s.t.General classification after stage 5 RiderTeamTime DSQ 16h 20' 44" 2 + 5" 3 + 36" 4 + 43" 5 + 50" 6 + 1' 06" 7 + 1' 16" 8 + 1' 17" DSQ + 1' 27" 10 + 1' 41"
Stage 6 14 May 2009 — Brixen to Mayrhofen (Austria),
This stage was one of the longest in the 2009 Giro. The first half of the stage was undulating, without a categorized climb. The second half featured two short climbs with a flat valley in between them. The descent from the second climb, Gerlospass, left a flat to race before the finish in Austria.
The day's breakaway comprised five riders, and it formed after in the saddle. Their maximum advantage was just under eight minutes. Michele Scarponi and Vasil Kiryienka shed their mates on the second climb of the day, about from the finish. Scarponi dropped Kiryienka later and went it alone for the stage win. The pink jersey group absorbed all the other members of the morning breakaway and finished half a minute behind Scarponi, with six from that group gaining four seconds on race leader Danilo Di Luca at the finish. Lance Armstrong lost even more time, finishing 43 seconds behind second place man Edvald Boasson Hagen.
Stage 6 result RiderTeamTime 1 5h 49' 55" 2 + 32" 3 s.t. 4 s.t. 5 s.t. 6 s.t. 7 s.t. 8 + 36" DSQ s.t. DSQ s.t.General classification after stage 6 RiderTeamTime DSQ 22h 11' 15" 2 + 5" 3 + 36" 4 + 43" 5 + 50" 6 + 1' 06" 7 + 1' 16" 8 + 1' 17" DSQ + 1' 27" 10 + 1' 41"
Stage 7 15 May 2009 — Innsbruck (Austria) to Chiavenna,