Giro: Men to watch

Dario Frigo: In-form stage racer but Giro outsider

This year's Giro d'Italia - cycling's Tour of Italy - seems more than likely to have a home winner.

The country is the most powerful in world cycling, and its riders traditionally dominate the event.

With international television coverage restricted this year until a last minute deal, this situation was not going to change.

So who will chase victory as the race winds its way north and then around the mountainous Dolomites and Alps this May and June?

Many look no further than these Italians.

• World number one Francesco Casagrande was heartbroken last season, when an injury helped cost him the race in the final time trial. He also switched teams in the winter and now has the tactical acumen of Fassa Bortolo team manager Giancarlo Ferreti to fall back on.
• Defending champion Stephano Garzelli has now joined the world's richest team Mapei, who are looking for a first big stage race win for half a decade. He is determined to prove that last year was no fluke - he inherited a win partly because of long-time leader Casagrande's knee problem.
• Gilberto Simoni has twice finished on the podium in the past two Giros. Now 29, there is increasing pressure on him to deliver soon at this highest level for the Lampre team.
• Twice former winner Ivan Gotti is the hardest man to shake off during the Giro, and often steals glory simply because he has the most stamina.
• Mountain finishes mean the Giro will be won in the mountains where Paolo Salvodelli is doubly effective. The recent Tour of Romandie in Switzerland confirmed the good form of "Il Falcone", the fastest descender of mountains the sport.
• Marco Pantani, controversial 1998 Giro and Tour winner, is also back to prove his doubters wrong. They number the Italian judicial system and the Tour organisation, who have refused this Mercatone Uno team a ride in France in July.
• If the more established Italian members of the international peloton fail then 25-year-old Daniele di Luca is the younger rider that all Italy will look to after winning a stage in his second Giro in 2000.
• Others will point to Dario Frigo, winner of the traditional Tour of Romandie as well as this year's Paris-Nice - a genuine outsider.

From abroad, Germany's Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour winner rides his first Giro, nominally as a warm-up for the July event.

Mario Cipollini celebrates a pre-Giro win

But the Telekom star and new American team-mate Kevin Livingston will be closely watched.

The sprinters will also be chasing glory on the flatter stages, and there are plenty with points to prove.

• Mario Cipollini has the same point to prove as Pantani. The Saeco team has been excluded from the Tour de France, but Super Mario looks in great form to prove his doubters wrong.
• Fabio Baldato of Fassa Bortolo has not won a Giro stage since 1993 but is one of the fast finishers ready to challenge Cipollini.
• Ivan Quaranta is the young man regarded by the Italians as Cipollini's natural successor - and has won four stages in his two Giro appearances.
• Dutchman Jeroen Blijlevens won two stages in the 1999 Giro and is a long-time adversary of Cipollini, providing a rare amount of non-Italian interest.
• Czech Jan Svorada is another of the sprinting old guard, set to get involved in the push and shove at the end of the flat stages and looking to add to five previous Giro stage wins.

There are also others who will have a say in stage wins, if not the major prize.

Italians Wladimir Belli and Davide Rebellin are riders suited to single-day and short stage race riding who may take a day's glory.

Swiss stars Oskar Camenzind and Laurent Dufaux plus the Russian Dmitri Konyshev fall into the same category.

And then there are the climbers, who will have their eyes on the green mountains jersey as well as some fearsome steep finishes.

Columbia's Hernan Buenahora, the Spaniard Juan Carlos Dominguez as well as home riders Mariano Piccoli - and Leonardo Piepoli are mountain goats.

Finally there is one man who cannot be ignored in the time trials, even if he can be ruled out of overall victory - Ukrainian Sergei Gontchar.