Until now there has been ceasefire between the race favourites in the Giro d'Italia and it won't be broken before Thursday's time trial. After the rest day, racing resumes with one of just four remaining opportunities for the sprinters and the fast finishers are unlikely to miss the chance to sprint for glory in Salsomaggiore Terme.

 

The course

After a rest day, many riders suffer and so they will be glad to know that they will get a gentle return to racing mode in one of  what is just a few remaining opportunities for the sprinters. The riders head over 173km from Modena to Salsomaggiore Terme in a westerly direction as they prepare themselves to change direction and head into the Dolomitian heartland later in the week.

 

The stage runs across the flat roads of the Po Valley through Modena, Reggio Emilia and Parma. There

are no clearly challenging or demanding sectors before the last kilometres. As for all stages crossing densely populated areas, roundabouts, traffic islands and speed bumps are the main “typical” obstacles. The feed zone is set in Villarotta.

 

After passing Fidenza, the last kilometers run slightly uphill, up to Bagni di Tabiano, where the route features a short climb, followed by a fast, technically difficult descent leading to Salsomaggiore Terme, about 3 km from the finish. The next 2km are marked by a few roundabouts and quite sharp bends. Inside the final kilometre, there are two sharp turns that precede a sweeping bend which leads onto the home stretch, 120m long, on 7.5m wide, asphalted roadway. The final 1000m are slightly uphill as they have an average gradient of 1%.

 

Salsomaggiore Terme hosted a finish of the 2011 Giro di Padania where it all came down to the predicted bunch sprint, won by Sacha Modolo ahead of Elia Viviani and Danilo Napolitano. Viviani will try to go one better this time.

 

 

 

The weather

For now, it seems that the riders have left the rainy weather in Southern Italy behind them and after two sunny days they should again enjoy pleasant conditions for the tenth stage. It will be a mostly cloudy day though but the sun may come through in the middle afternoon. The temperature will reach a maximum of 20 degrees.

 

There will only be a light wind from a northerly direction that may pick up a bit as the day goes on. This means that the riders will have a headwind in the first part of the stage before turning into a crosswind for most of the remaining part of the stage. There will be a crosswinds on the technical descent before the riders turn into a cross-headwind and then a cross-tailwind for the final 2.5km. It will be a crosswind from the right on the 120m finishing straight

 

The favourites

The sprinters don't have an awful lot of opportunities left before the finish in Trieste and this will be only one of two in the second week. Hence, there is virtually no chance that they will let this obvious sprint stage slip away and we can expect a big battle between the fast finisher in the technical finish.

 

Nacer Bouhanni may have established his position as the leading sprinter but his wins have certainly not been very convincing. Several sprinters still believe that they can potentially win a stage and team's like Cannondale, Giant-Shimano and Trek have a big part of their teams completely built for the bunch sprints. Hence, there will be a lot of interest in bringing back the early break.

 

We can expect the stage to pan out like a classic sprint stage. Wednesday's stage is an obvious breakaway opportunity and all riders know that it is a waste of energy to go on the attack tomorrow. They prefer to save themselves for later in the race and we can expect a rather small break mostly consisting of riders from the wildcard teams take off very early in the stage. FDJ, Cannondale, Giant-Shimano and maybe Trek will combine forces to bring it back together for a bunch sprint. We shouldn't see a repeat of the hectic finish from Friday's stage where the hilly terrain allowed the break to almost stay away. This stage is much easier to control and there is only a very little chance that the sprint teams won't time things right.

 

The finale, however, is very tricky. The climb won't be very tough and will probably not cause the sprinters to lose position. It will be important to crest the summit near the front as the technical is very tricky and splits could occur. We can expect a big battle for position on the climb to enter the downhill section in a good position. At the bottom, there will be a little room to move up but when the riders take a left-hand turn 1500m from the line, the final part is so complicated that it will be very difficult to improve your position.

 

This technical finish means that it is a stage for the sprinters with strong lead-out trains or great positioning skills and the short finishing straight means that acceleration and "kick" are important attributes too. This means that it is again a sprint for Nacer Bouhanni who again will be the man to beat.

 

Bouhanni's lead-out train is a solid one but not one to dominate the finales. However, Sebastien Chavanel usually does a good job in keeping Bouhanni protected and covered from the wind and the French sprinter himself is almost unrivaled when it comes to getting onto the wheel he chooses. That's how he won stage seven when he latched onto the back end of the Giant-Shimano train and his win was more based on positioning skills than speed.

 

He has missed out on positioning earlier in the race - it happened in Dublin on stage 3 - but it is a very rare occurrence. He claims to have come through the first mountains better than ever before and he is has a lot of confidence in himself. As he has also demonstrated that he is the fastest rider in this race and has a great kick for this kind of explosive sprints, we put our money on another Bouhanni win.

 

In his first two wins, his closest rival has been Giacomo Nizzolo and in fact, the Italian was only narrowly beaten on both occasions. In both sprints, the Italian was actually the fastest and just ran out of road in his quest to take the win.

 

This proves that Nizzolo is almost as fast as Bouhanni and at the moment he seems to be number two in the hierarchy. With Danilo Hondo, Eugenio Alafaci and Boy Van Poppel, he has an excellent team to support him but they are not yet strong enough to control the finales. They apply the same tactics as Bouhanni which is to position their sprint on the back end of the strongest trains.

 

Until now, Bouhanni has positioned himself better than Nizzolo and that has made all the difference. It's unlikely to be any different in tomorrow's expected sprint but the Italian has proved that he has the speed to win if he is not too far behind his French rival.

 

When Marcel Kittel was still in the race, Giant-Shimano did some terrible lead-outs but their sprinter was strong enough to win the races on his own. Since Kittel has left the race, they have done everything right and have dominated the finales in both stages 4 and 7.

 

Luka Mezgec dropped his chain in Bari and in Foligno, he was delivered perfectly by Bert De Backer. That sprint, however, also proved that he is not as fast as the likes of Bouhanni and Nizzolo and he will have to count on his team to win tomorrow's stage.

 

In this kind of finish, team support may be more important than speed and we wouldn't be surprised to see Albert Timmer, Bert De Backer and Tom Veelers guide their Slovenian sprinter into the final turn in the first position. With a short finishing straight, there will be very little time for the rivals to come back and this could make it Mezgec's day to shine.

 

In the first sprints, Cannondale were the strongest lead-out train but they failed in stage 7. That was no surprise though as they had carried the brunt of the responsibility to chase down the break and they were short in numbers by the time they rolled into Foligno.

 

Tomorrow they can expect to be back at full strength and even though they miss Davide Villella, the combination of Michel Koch, Oscar Gatto and Daniele Ratto has proved to be strong enough to dominate the finales. We can expect a big battle for the front position between Giant-Shimano and Cannondale and we wouldn't be surprised if the Italian team leads Elia Viviani through the final turn in the first position.

 

In the Tour of Turkey, Viviani sprinted excellently but for some reason he has not had the same speed in the Giro. This means that he is no longer the kind of favourite that he was earlier in the race but in tomorrow's stage, his team could make the difference that allows him to take his first grand tour stage victory.

 

Roberto Ferrari has had a hard first time at Lampre-Merida but in this race he seems to have found back to his former level. Unlike most of his rivals, he is completely on his own in the finale but so far it has not been too much of a disadvantage and he has been one of the most consistent sprinters in the race.

 

Ferrari positions himself perfectly, is technically very strong and has a formidable acceleration. This makes him a perfect fit for this technical finale and if he manages to latch onto the wheel of the dominant train in the finale, he has the speed to win.

 

Ben Swift is no pure sprinter but in this race he has been sprinting better than ever before. In the Irish sprints, he was clearly one of the fastest and with Bernhard Eisel, Chris Sutton and Edvald Boasson Hagen, he has one of the strongest teams. They dominated the sprint in Dublin and if they can do so again tomorrow, Swift has the speed to finish it off. He doesn't seem to be too affected by his stage 6 crash and is definitely a winner candidate.

 

Finally, we will select our joker. Again we will put our money on Nicola Ruffoni. Until now,  the young Italian has not had an awful lot of luck and he still hasn't had one single top 10 finish. However, he proved how fast he is when he beat Bouhanni in an intermediate sprint a few days ago. His main disadvantage is his lack of experience which makes it hard for him to get into the right position and until now he hasn't been able to do a proper sprint. There is a big risk that he will again find himself boxed in tomorrow but if he gets a clear run to the line, he is one of the select few that has the speed to win.

 

CyclingQuotes' stage winner pick: Nacer Bouhanno

Other winner candidates: Giacomo Nizzolo, Luka Mezgec

Outsider: Elia Viviani, Roberto Ferrari, Ben Swift

Joker: Nicola Ruffoni