Giro Jot del Giorno - 5/20/2012

Every year, it seems, the organizers of a Grand Tour try to change things up to alter the tactics and strategy the teams make on certain stages. Sometimes it doesn't work out so well, like the year the Tour de France tried to have two stages without race radio, and the teams rebelled, threatening to embarrass the neutral start by sitting on their bikes for an hour. One thing Grand Tours like to mess with is bonus time at intermediate sprints and stage finishes, by eliminating them altogether, or having them only at the finish line. The Giro this year is no different, trying something to make the GC boys attack on climbs much further out from the line: all the mountaintop finishes have no bonus time. This rule might cause some of the breakaways to escape, but if the overall contenders want to make time on their rivals in the mountains, they have to pedal away from them and make it stick.