The 2011 Giro d'Italia was the 94th Giro d'Italia, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The race started on 7 May with a team time trial in Turin to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, when the city served as the first capital of the single state.
The route was one of the most difficult in the modern history of the race, with substantial criticism that it was simply too hard for a three-week-long race. Of the seven stages categorized as 'high mountain', six had summit arrivals, highlighted by the three stages before the second rest day ending at Grossglockner in Austria, the exceptionally steep Monte Zoncolan, and a tall and steep peak near the Fascia Valley in Gardeccia. There was also, for the fifth consecutive Giro, a climbing time trial, this one to the Nevegal. Of the race's 18 mass-start stages, only three ended with the majority of the field together at the front of the race.
In the third stage, rider Wouter Weylandt crashed coming down the Passo del Bocco, near the town of Mezzanego, suffering catastrophic injury. Despite substantial resuscitation efforts, he was established to have died on the spot. The fourth stage was not competitively raced; instead, it was run as a cycling procession. On the second rest day, Xavier Tondó, a member of , was killed in an accident at his home. Although he was not a participant, his death caused his teammates and other members of the peloton to pay tribute to him in the subsequent stages.
Strong overall favorite Alberto Contador was the race's original winner, in what constituted his second Giro championship. His winning margin ahead of second-placed Michele Scarponi was over six minutes. He also won the points competition as the most consistent high finisher, also with a substantial lead over Scarponi in second place, and Vincenzo Nibali completed the podium. In the other sub-classifications, Stefano Garzelli won the mountains competition and Roman Kreuziger finished as the best rider aged 25 or under in the general classification; he finished the race fifth overall.
In February 2012, the Court of Arbitration for Sport decided that Contador, following his positive test for clenbuterol at the 2010 Tour de France, lost his results since that event. He was therefore stripped of the 2011 Giro title, and Scarponi became the new victor of the race, and the winner of the points classification.
Teams
All 18 UCI ProTeams were invited automatically and obligated to attend. Two UCI Professional Continental teams were announced well ahead of time, and . UCI rules normally limit races to a peloton of 200 riders, but the Giro received special dispensation for a 207-rider peloton, allowing a 23rd team. The three additional invited teams were , , and . Despite talk that ProTeam might be excluded due to the doping scandals involving team members Riccardo Riccò and Ezequiel Mosquera, they were included pursuant to UCI rules.
The full list of participating teams is:
Pre-race favorites
While the Giro had in its peloton many notable riders, including six former Grand Tour winners, the odds-on favorite was always 's Alberto Contador. The 2008 Giro champion, who had likewise won the 2008 Vuelta a España and three editions of the Tour de France, announced in April 2010 that he would contest the Giro in 2011. Though his status was put in doubt after a positive test for clenbuterol at the 2010 Tour de France, he was cleared by his national federation in February 2011 and able to return to racing, though the case still pended a final appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport later in 2011. Contador was the overwhelming favorite for overall victory. Reigning Giro champion Ivan Basso chose not to return, preferring to focus on the Tour de France later in the season. He briefly considered riding as a domestique for Vincenzo Nibali, but opted against it because of his physical condition at the time and the feeling that doing so would be disrespectful to the race. The 2011 Giro was thus the third successive edition, and fourth in the last five, in which the reigning champion did not return to defend his championship.
The other five former Grand Tour winners in the field were Stefano Garzelli, Danilo Di Luca, Denis Menchov, Carlos Sastre, and Vincenzo Nibali. Of the five, only Menchov and Nibali were considered realistic overall contenders. Other riders named as contenders included Roman Kreuziger, riding as the leader of the team and a protected rider in a Grand Tour for the first time in his career, 2010 Giro d'Italia runner-up David Arroyo, captain and 2010 Giro fourth-place finisher Michele Scarponi, and Joaquim Rodríguez. Riders further noted as darkhorses included Sastre, Contador's teammate and main support rider Richie Porte, Di Luca, 's Igor Antón, Garzelli, Domenico Pozzovivo, Italian national champion Giovanni Visconti, and 's dual leaders Tiago Machado and Yaroslav Popovych. Visconti was given the irregular race number of 150, wearing it as the Italian national champion to commemorate 150 years of Italian unification. While squads are normally given numbers from the same group of ten, such as 151 through 159, numbers ending in zero are seldom issued. Visconti's squad wore numbers 150 through 158.
The ongoing Mantova doping investigation, involving members of the team, as it was known in 2009, had an effect on the race. It greatly affected the team itself, as their manager Giuseppe Saronni was implicated in the investigation and stepped down as team manager shortly before the Giro began. He was replaced by former sporting director Roberto Damiani. Their contingent for the Giro specifically excluded any riders or staff implicated in the investigation. The foremost of these riders was former Giro winner Damiano Cunego, though Damiani felt he would eventually be cleared of any wrongdoing. While the was unlikely to field an overall favorite, given that their top man Cadel Evans chose to focus on the Tour de France, they were also affected by the investigation, for the second year in a row. Just as they had before the 2010 Giro, the team suspended Alessandro Ballan and Mauro Santambrogio, members of the team in 2009 who were named in the investigation. As with 2010, the team reactivated the two riders after the Giro ended.
The near total dearth of flat, sprinter-friendly stages did not stop sprinters Mark Cavendish, Tyler Farrar, and Alessandro Petacchi, from all taking the start. One sprinter who was expected to take part in the race, 's Andrea Guardini, was not part of the start list. Though his sporting director at the Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey had promised him a place in the Giro should he win two stages at that event (Guardini did indeed win two stages in Turkey), the team believed he would be better served continuing to take part in somewhat smaller races. Other sprinters in the Giro peloton mainly came from much smaller teams and teams with little overall ambition. and sent two sprinters apiece—Gerald Ciolek and Francesco Chicchi for the Belgian team and Robbie Hunter and Robbie McEwen on the American squad. Giro debutants had among their squad Slovenian sprinter Borut Božič. 's sprinter was Francisco Ventoso, one of the season's most prolific winners to date. The small and also sent sprinters, Roberto Ferrari and 2010 Giro stage winner Manuel Belletti, respectively. The team had intended to send Daniele Bennati, a former winner of the points classification in the Giro d'Italia who had had great success at the recently run Circuit de la Sarthe. After a crash at the Tour de Romandie where he sustained multiple fractures and a lung contusion, he was forced out of the Giro. That squad therefore turned their sprinting hopes to the rider originally set to be Bennati's leadout man, Belgian sprinter Wouter Weylandt.
Route and stages
The route for the 2011 Giro was unveiled in Turin on 23 October 2010. It was immediately recognized as being quite difficult, featuring 40 categorized climbs among its 18 mass-start stages, seven of them summit finishes. Seventeen of the 20 regions of Italy were visited in the race, as the 2011 race commemorated the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. Attention was immediately drawn to the three stages preceding the second rest day, stages 13, 14, and 15, each of which featured summit finishes and multiple high-rated climbs, among them the Grossglockner, Monte Zoncolan, and the Passo Giau, this Giro's Cima Coppi, its tallest climb. The route as it was originally announced was in length, just shy of the maximum length allowed under UCI regulations. The first summit finish was the Montevergine di Mercogliano in Stage 7, whilst the first week was concluded on the slopes of Mount Etna, which the peloton was faced with twice in stage 9. The final major climb was the Colle delle Finestre, which made its return after last featuring in the 2005 Giro d'Italia. While there were five stages classified as flat, and Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi claimed he saw as many as seven potential sprint finishes, consensus was overwhelming that the majority of the route favored the strongest of the climbers at the expense of other riders.
While the route did get some positive critiques, there was also critical opinion that it was simply too difficult. This was particularly in comparison with the similarly difficult, yet not as difficult, route for the 2011 Tour de France revealed days earlier. sporting director Sean Yates called the route "brutal" and said that serious Tour de France contenders would not bother coming to the race since it was so difficult. This was seen as an early indication that his team's leader Bradley Wiggins would skip the Giro. Additional critical analysis concurred that the route was excessively difficult, for its incredible amount of vertical climbing ( in the route as originally announced), number of summit finishes and long transfers, and the unpaved or 'white roads' which featured in stages 5 and 20. Race director Angelo Zomegnan balked at the criticisms, saying simply "It's a hard Giro but the Giro has to be hard."