I don't know how truly hard the new Giro will be, I'm certain it will be less exhausting than its official presentation. Endless like the trophy, a deluge of words without ever getting to the point, in the end one reaches for their wallet and asks for strength, come on, how much do I need to see this blessed map.

An entire afternoon at 15%. From kilometer zero to the finish. One way or another, someone makes it. And in the end discovers the usual autumn law: routes are all beautiful and ugly, easy and difficult, gray and artistic, depending on who and how they're ridden.

This time, compared to last year, there's a bit more excitement: imagine if Vingegaard really comes to complete his grand tour collection, imagine Evenepoel comes to vary the monotony of his third place at the Tour, add that we Italians can finally test Pellizzari as a team leader, hypothesize all this and you'd actually have a great Giro, one climb more or less.

But it's better to be very honest: right now, we're stuck in fantasy mode. Now the game is in the hands of team schedules (interests), and perhaps also the negotiation margins of the organization with its budgets, so the Giro on paper is the usual big question mark: beautiful, ugly, easy, difficult? The answer is necessarily only one: it depends.

If we want to spend a word in Bar Sport style looking at the routes, as they aseptically present themselves, these considerations emerge more than anything else.

It's a Bulgarian Giro, hoping it's only geographically so, because the Albanian one already left deep depressive trails (the teams are so unhappy with the surprise that they'd all prefer to spend a weekend at the dentist).

It's a Giro immediately defined as manageable, not crushing, leaving plenty of fuel in the tank for the Tour. Official definition, "balanced". More Christian Democrat than democratic.

It's a Giro that wants to please everyone without pleasing anyone in particular, with 40.2 kilometers of time trial, 8 flat stages, 7 nervous stages (first week with Blockhaus, Marche walls, Corno alle Scale), 5 mountain stages (we're being generous), but with the Cima Coppi on Giau.

It's a Giro with a time trial clearly tailored for Remco, although someone still needs to convince me that in a grand tour time trial Vinge won't then give up that much ground.

This and more. But above all, it's a Giro without author's signatures, without cult locations, those that make an ordinary Giro a special Giro (cf. "The Little Prince"). And as far as I'm concerned, a Giro without Mortirolo, without Zoncolan, without Colle delle Finestre, will always be an ordinary Giro.