Welcome back to the Lenten Rouge Cycling Podcast, brought to you by Join Cycling for the recap of Paranese Stage 3, the Team Time Trial and Tereno Adriatico Stage 2.

We're going to start with, I think, the best stage of the day, which was Toreno Adriatico Stage 2, which was a very hard, long, classic style stage, 206 kilometers long from Camoore to San Giminiano.

Jiminiano.

San Gimiano.

Long stage, a lot of flat on the coast before they headed inland to some

hilly region up and down, a lot of climbing in the last 70 kilometres. And a lot of guys like

strong sprinters just straight up dropping, especially there was a 6% 4K climb where they

went really, really hard. A lot of riders dropped. The key corner was this left hand at 270 degrees

and there's, I think, a bus stop in the middle of the

corner you go either side of the bus stop and it was wet there's a descent into it and then after

that there's a 1.3k 7% climb on gravel and then it flattens off on the gravel then it kicks up and they go over some cobbles,

they go through an archway into some narrowings, and then the last climb is 1.2k, 7%.

So very technical final part of this stage.

Final 10 minutes of this was very, very exciting, a lot happening.

Vanderpull is the favourite Benji because you've got to have it it all here. You got to have punch, positioning, no fear. What else you've got to have? Well, I think that's basically it, though? Handling. We're looking at, yeah, that's true. We're looking at the stage with Vanderpil as the favorite. I also expect Del Toro to be up there. There's also the question of, can versatile classic sprinters survive?

Because I think Paul Manier before the stage said,

50-50 chance I can survive.

I didn't necessarily believe in that.

I saw it as two series of a last three kilometers,

last seven kilometers in total,

especially with Del Toro, especially with Vanderpoo.

Those riders don't necessarily just want to do a passive seven kilometers and ride to a 50-up

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