Giro d'Italia 2022 Odds: Carapaz a worthy favourite

The first Grand Tour of the 2022 season gets underway on Friday and Neil Monnery has put together some thoughts on the contenders along with having collated the odds for who will be wearing the Maglia Rosa after 21 stages of racing...

The 2022 Giro d’Italia starts this Friday and all eyes are on Team INEOS to see if they can win the race for the third straight year. Tao Geoghegan Hart surprised pretty much everyone when he emerged victorious in 2020 having not even been his team leader at the start of the event but Egan Bernal’s pink jersey a year ago was much more to plan.

This year the team once more have an extremely strong squad with 2019 winner of the Giro Richard Carapaz the heavy favourite with the bookies. The 28 year-old took victory with former team Movistar and has been on the podium at the trio of Grand Tours in the past three years. 

That strong team behind Carapaz includes Richie Porte. The Australian is riding his final Grand Tour and with the likes of Pavel Sivakov and Jonathan Castroviejo to help shepard him through the mountains along with the trusted Road Captain Salvatore Puccio, who joins Jhonatan Narvaez and Ben Swift to help manage the flatter stages, INEOS have gone all in for the Maglia Rosa as sprinter Elia Viviani has been left on the sidelines.

Away from Carapaz and INEOS, the bookies have pegged Simon Yates as the second choice in the betting markets. The 29 year-old from Bury has already tasted Grand Tour glory in 2018 when he won the Vuelta and has shown good form in 2022 - finishing second to Primoz Roglic at Paris-Nice. He does however have a complicated history with the Giro having looked like a champion in waiting before falling away dramatically on Stage 19 when Chris Froome went on the attack 80KM from the end but his collapse happened even before Sky went on the offensive up the Colle Delle Finestre. A fair enough second pick for me.

Surprisingly it is Joao Almeida who is the third choice with the bookies. The 23 year-old has a good record at the Giro having finished fourth and sixth in the past two years. His 2022 campaign has seen a top ten finish at Paris-Nice and the bottom step of the podium at the Volta a Catalunya but still seeing him at a shorter price than the likes of Mikel Landa and Miguel Angel Lopez doesn’t seem right to me. With just 26.6KM of Individual Time Trials, it certainly helps these two former Giro podium finishers.

Undoubtedly the biggest wildcard in the race is Tom Dumoulin. The 2017 champion followed that success up with the runners-up spot in the 2018 edition and at the Tour de France the same year. Since then however he’s only raced at three Grand Tours and finished just one - a seventh place result at the 2020 Tour de France. At his best, the 31 year-old is a legitimate contender and even if Team Jumbo-Visma are holding some of their bigger names back for France, they still have a good team. The problem is Dumoulin has struggled to replicate his previous form - particularly on hilly stages.

Bora-Honsgrohe go into the race with the three-headed leadership team of Wilco Kelderman, Jai Hindley and Emanuel Buchmann. It is Hindley who has the best record at a Grand Tour as the 25 year-old Australian was briefly favourite in that crazy 2020 event and led going into the final Individual Time Trial. His two top teammates have both finished on a GT podium as well and if one of them emerged as a contender deep into the race - I would not be shocked one jot.

If you are looking for some betting value then eye up some of the supporting cast from the stronger teams. When Hart won in 2020, INEOS were all about Geraint Thomas. He however would fracture his pelvis following a freak accident after colliding with a stray water bottle. This type of thing can happen in cycling so betting on the top backup at a strong team can often lead to value. 

On that note, Pello Bilbao does attract some interest at 33/1 at the time of writing and the romantics will look at Richie Porte and wonder if the Australian could win in his final ever three-week event should things go wrong with Richard Carapaz. 

I do think Carapaz is the worthy favourite. I’m not totally convinced he should be as short as he is but the Ecuadorian is in terrific form and has the potential to blow this race wide open on a very hilly terrain. 

If you want to try and grab some value then Pello Bilbao as indicated earlier or Ivan Sosa of Movistar intrigue. The latter is available at 80/1 with BetFred at the time of writing and he’s an outstanding climber. If you want a left-field then he’s my choice.