The 89th Giro d'Italia cycling classic heads back into Italy Thursday after a Belgian preamble that warmed up the favourites for one of the toughest races ever.
Top tip Ivan Basso is primed for his first stage-race triumph after coming third and second in the last two editions of the Giro's big brother, the Tour de France. Speaking before the race, Basso dismissed suggestions that he was using the Giro as a warm-up for his latest assault on the Tour - now that seven-time winner Lance Armstrong has hung up his bike.
"I'm really up for this. It would be my first big scalp," Basso told Italy's biggest sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport, which organises the race.
"I just hope the pundits have it wrong and the last few climbs aren't too steep for someone as big as me," said the rangy all-rounder who is not a specialist climber but usually holds his own when the road winds upwards.
After four stages, all the big names are poised in the leading group ahead of Thursday's team time trial - the Giro's first in 17 years - which should start splitting the field.
Basso is reckoned to have the strongest team but 2002 and 2005 Giro winner Paolo Savoldelli also has a good squad behind him. Savoldelli is just off the lead, 13 seconds behind German surprise Stefan Schumacher, while Basso is 30 seconds back.
Damiano Cunego, the 24-year-old who claimed the Giro in 2004, is 32 seconds behind while 2001 and 2003 winner Gilberto Simoni is 49 seconds back.
Venezuela's Jose' Rujano, a climber expected to pose a threat on three mammoth closing climbs, is one minute 28 seconds behind and Germany's Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour winner, is another 10 seconds back. Ullrich has said he will treat the Giro "with respect" but some pundits think he's really just revving the engines ahead of the Tour.
As for the others, they are eager to prove who is top dog - especially Simoni and Cunego who have never really gotten over the ill-feeling caused by the youngster jumping ahead of his team leader two years ago.
Basso, at 28 still coming into his prime, topped a pre-race poll of Gazzetta dello Sport readers with 52% ahead of Cunego with 27% and Simoni with 9%. Belgian legend Eddy Merckx has tipped Basso, saying "he has the experience and he's in great shape".
After Thursday's team time trial from Piacenza to Cremona, the riders roll down through Romagna before the first uphill finish on May 14th, the 8th stage, at Maielletta in Abruzzo.
That's where the favourites, who are all good climbers, will test each other out for the first time.
If anyone makes a big move there, he will have to defend it on the race's second individual time trial around the Tuscan city of Pontedera on the 18th. It comes after the second rest day, in which the pack flies up from a painless stroll along the Puglian coast.
Savoldelli was the pick of the bunch in the first time trial in Belgium but Basso wasn't too far behind him.
Of the others, Cunego fared the worst.
After Pontedera, Cunego, Simoni and Rujano will bide their time until the Giro heads into the Dolomites from Piedmont.
The climbers may try to pull away on the 16th stage on May 23rd, with a testing finish near Trento.
But some could keep their strength in reserve for the next day, the first of three monster stages, a killer ascent up to the Austrian border at Plan De Corones (Kronplatz). The climb is so steep - a 26% gauge near the end - that riders will have to use the lightest gear ever seen at the Giro, a 34X29 ratio that pushes them less than 2.5 metres per rotation.
"They'll need mountain axes to get up there," the Gazzetta said in its pre-Giro assessment.
New Italian Premier Romano Prodi, a keen cyclist, is expected to be in the crowd cheering the riders in. The leaders will try to get a little puff back on the next, 18th stage, a less tasking trek across the Austrian mountains.
Then the race returns to Italy for the 19th and 20th stages, where the Giro will be won and lost.
The 19th is a four-mountain back-breaker across northern Friuli, which the Gazzetta described as "spine-chilling".
The 20th and penultimate stage, across the Veneto Dolomites back to Trento, takes the riders across the highest point of the Giro, traditionally called the Coppi Peak after cycling legend Fausto Coppi, the Gavia summit at a head-spinning 2,618 metres.
It doesn't end there though.
There's still the mighty Mortirolo mountain to be scaled before the exhausted racers troop into the Valtellina ski resort of Aprica.
The next day the winner will take his traditional bow by cruising down into Milan on the afternoon of May 28th. By that stage, of course, many of the riders will have dropped out. The first to go will be the sprinters, who may call it a day before the Dolomites.
Italy's new sprint ace Alessandro Petacchi has already sadly been lost, after breaking his left kneecap in Belgium. Petacchi has 19 stage wins to his credit and was hoping to reach Coppi's 22 - a record in the days before sprints became so common that 'Lion King' Mario Cipollini, a self-confessed much lesser rider, managed to rack up 42.
With Petacchi out of the picture, pint-sized Australian veteran Robbie McEwen will be favoured to take his Giro total past the 10 he reached with two wins in Belgium. He'll certainly be the favourite for Friday's pizza-flat stage from Busseto in Lombardy to Forli' in Romagna.
Meanwhile the Giro will continue to pick up viewers worldwide.
For the first time this year China is picking up daily highlights, adding a potential audience of 1.35 billion people to the billion in Europe, America and Africa. If the pundits are right, they could get to see a new Giro king crowned: Ivan Basso from Gallarate near Milan.
