After a very exciting showdown in the toughest edition of the Women’s Tour yet, the Women’s WorldTour continues in Italy for women’s cycling only remaining “Grand Tour”, the Giro Rosa.

With less emphasis on climber’s stages, only second and third category climbs to be found in this year’s edition, racing in the Giro Rosa will be different and dynamic.

While all stage wins will be hotly contested day in and day out, the overall pink jersey is what most teams will ride for, as well as the Women’s WorldTour leader’s jersey, with the Giro Rosa forming the twelfth round in the Women’s WorldTour.

The Giro Rosa in numbers

5: There are five jersey up for grabs in the 2017 Giro Rosa. Scroll down to ‘The Giro Rosa in colours’ for more on this.

7: Each team can line-up seven riders. Some teams are taking six riders to Italy.

9: Racing finishes on Sunday July 9, with the tour’s winner determined after the 124 kilometer stage from and to Torre del Greco.

10: There are ten stages in the 2017 Giro Rosa, which includes one team time trial, one individual time trial and eight road races.

11.5: The number of kilometers in the opening team time trial on June 30. Which team will be the fastest and which of their riders crosses the line first to become the first leader in the 2017 Giro Rosa?

24: There are 24 teams scheduled to start on Friday.

28: The Giro Rosa (previously branded as Giro d’Italia Femminile and the Giro Donne) celebrates its 28th edition this year.

30: The 2017 Giro Rosa starts on Friday, June 30, in Aquileia, not with a traditional evening prologue, but a team time trial.

168: A total of 168 riders are on the start list, including past winners Megan Guarnier (Boels-Dolmans), Anna van der Breggen (Boels-Dolmans) and Claudia Lichtenberg (Wiggle-High5). Scroll down to ‘The Giro Rosa in names’ for more on this.

1010.8: The 2017 Giro Rosa will cover a total of 1010.8 kilometers of racing.

The Giro Rosa in colours

There are five jerseys up for grabs at the Giro Rosa.

PINK: The pink leader’s jersey is obviously the most prestigious of the lot. Four different riders have worn the pink jersey in 2016, with eventual winner Guarnier bringing it home for her team Boels-Dolmans. With the level playing field in the women’s peloton at the moment, we’re again expecting the jersey to change shoulders a couple of times before the overall winner stakes her claim on it.

Cash prize: The pink jersey is sponsored by Colnago and the overall race winner will earn €1.130, a little more than in 2015, but still a small sum compared to the €115.668 that Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) won for his win in the Giro d’Italia earlier this year.

PURPLE: The purple points jersey (or ‘ciclamino’ as the Italians call it beautifully) is the sprinter’s jersey. Points are awarded at the finish of each stage and at intermediate sprint points. Guarnier took the purple jersey in 2015 and 2016, with Marianne Vos (WM3 Pro Cycling) winning the points classification the three years before that.

Cash prize: The purple points jersey is sponsored by Selle SMP, the winner will take home €350.

GREEN: The climbers will go after the green Queen of the Mountains (QOM) jersey. Points are awarded on each of the categorised climbs, with more points available on the category-two climbs than the climbs in the third category. There are only seven categorised climbs in the 2017 edition in total, five category-2-climbs and two category-3-climbs.

Cash prize: The green QOM is ironically sponsored by ‘Purple by Globalstock’. The jersey winner will win €450.

WHITE: The white young rider jersey is for the highest-placed U23 rider overall. Rabo-Liv has won this jersey in the last three years, with Kasia Niewiadoma in 2015 and 2016, and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot in 2014.

Cash prize: With the white jersey, also sponsored by Colnago, comes €350.

BLUE: The maglia azzuro is reserved for the best Italian rider, naturally. This jersey is worn by the highest-placed Italian rider in the GC and ensures that an Italian rider will be on the podium every day. In 2016, it was Tatiana Guderzo, representing Team Hitec, who took the jersey with her sixth place finish overall.

Cash prize: The rider that wins the blue jersey after ten days of racing gets €300, sponsored by GSG.

The Giro Rosa in names

Twenty-four teams will start in the Giro Rosa on Friday. Teams were only allowed to start with six riders last year, while it had been eight in the years before. In 2017, each team brings seven riders.

Three past winners are among the confirmed starters: last year’s winner Megan Guarnier (Boels-Dolmans), 2015 winner Anna van der Breggen (Boels-Dolmans) and 2009 winner Claudia Lichtenberg (Wiggle-High5).

Returning stage winners include Chloe Hosking (Alé Cipollini), Trixi Worrack and Barbara Guarischi (Canyon-SRAM), Lucinda Brand (Team Sunweb), Shara Gillow (FDJ-Futuroscope-NA), Annalisa Cucinotta (Lensworld-Zannata), Annemiek van Vleuten (Orica-Scott), Giorgia Bronzini (Wiggle-High5), Thalita de Jong (Lares-Waowdeals), and of course Guarnier, Van der Breggen and Lichtenberg.

Women CyclingFever updates its Giro Rosa rider startlist as soon as riders are confirmed by their teams, so check their website for the most up to date startlist.

Women’s WorldTour

The Giro Rosa is not just about the jerseys. As the biggest women’s tour on the calendar, it’s obviously also part of the Women’s WorldTour, with UCIWWT points up for grabs in each stage, for the overall winners and the team ranking.

Going into the race, Niewiadoma wears the purple leader’s jersey, with 42 points over her former teammate Van der Breggen in second place.

The entire top ten of the UCI Women’s WorldTour ranking will start in Italy, so there might be some changes in that after ten days of racing.

In the young rider classification, Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (Cervélo-Bigla) has a comfortable lead on numbers two, three and four, of which none will take to the start in the Giro Rosa. So we’re expecting Ludwig to grow her advantage even further.

Women’s WorldTour standings going into the Giro Rosa General classification

1. Kasia Niewiadoma (WM3 Pro Cycling- 612

2. Anna van der Breggen (Boels-Dolmans) – 570

3. Coryn Rivera (Team Sunbweb) – 528

4. Annemiek van Vleuten (Orica-Scott) – 469

5. Lizzie Deignan (Boels-Dolmans) – 393 Young rider classification

1. Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (Cervélo-Bigla) – 32

2. Alice Barnes (Drops Cycling) – 16

3. Anna Christian (Drops Cycling) – 10 Team classification

1. Boels-Dolmans – 1679

2. Team Sunweb – 1064

3. Wiggle-High5 – 961

The contenders

After being close in 2015, Guarnier was finally able to take home the pink leader’s jersey in 2016. She took the maglia rosa after stage one, but had to hand it over to her teammate and compatriot Evelyn Stevens after the second stage. Stevens held on to it until stage five, after which double Giro Rosa winner Mara Abbott (Wiggle-High5) got hold of it. Guarnier was able to take it back after stage six and retain it until the finish in Verbania.

The year before, Guarnier had lost the pink leader’s jersey in the penultimate stage, to stage winner Van der Breggen, then riding for Rabo-Liv. Van der Breggen dominated the stage eight individual time trial and took a minute on Guarnier.

This year, Guarnier and Van der Breggen will line up as teammates. In the Amgen women’s Tour of California, the double team leadership eventually went in favour of Van der Breggen, who won the GC via bonus seconds. Will it this year become another interesting battle within the Boels-Dolmans team, like we saw with Guarnier and Stevens in 2016?

Van der Breggen’s win in 2015 meant the fourth overall victory for Rabo-Liv, after Marianne Vos won the race in 2011, 2012 and 2014. When Rabo-Liv jokingly decided it would be Niewiadoma’s turn to win the pink jersey in 2016, she didn’t play a role in the GC anymore after stage four last year. But things will be different this year, we think, as Niewiadoma even skipped the national championships to focus on the Giro Rosa, where she will lead her team WM3 Pro Cycling.

Another rider to be keeping an eye on is Annemiek van Vleuten (Orica-Scott), who for the first time in her career will target the Giro Rosa overall. An aggressive racer, she didn’t really like the idea of having to ride defensively. But after her stellar performance in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Summer Olympics, and after the team had put the thought into her head, she warmed to the idea. A three-week altitude camp on Tenerife formed the final preparation. She knows what it’s like to wear the pink jersey, as she won the prologue both in 2014 and 2015, becoming the first leader of the race in those years. But her aim is now to be awarded the pink jersey not after the first, but the last day of racing in Italy.

How to follow the Giro Rosa

The Giro Rosa website tells us that RAI is the ‘Official Television of the Giro Rosa’ and that all ten stages will be commented by Stefano Rizzato. Rai3 will have twenty-minute highlights directly after the Tour de France broadcast. Bookmark this link to watch Rai3 – we trust you have found your favourite VPN solution to use from outside Italy.

There are also plenty of ways to follow along with the Giro Rosa online.

The official hashtag is #GiroRosa, or use #UCIWWT.

Sarah Connolly has several Twitter lists that include all accounts that might have live-tweets during the race.

The official Giro Rosa twitter account @GiroRosaCycling is typically a good source of information, too.

Either the Giro Rosa YouTube channel or UCI’s YouTube channel also typically posts a short highlights video daily, which will we include in our reports once they are available.

Giro Rosa on Ella

You can count on us to bring you the highlights of the Giro Rosa over the ten day race. We’ll be providing you with daily Giro Rosa Round-ups; a photo gallery with the best photos of the stage, to bring you the story of the stage. We will also share our collection of the best Giro Rosa videos we’ve found.

If there’s anything else you’re specifically looking for out of the Giro Rosa, don’t hesitate to let us know!

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Who is your favourite to win the 2017 Giro Rosa?