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The second rider on the GC ranking of Giro d'Italia competitors is Pello Bilbao. At age 32, he is riding his strongest season of his career, currently standing 8th in the PCS season ranking. A total different rider than João Almeida and therefore it is interesting to see what the statistics tell us.

Table 1. GC ranking competitors

First let us look at the points per specialty for Bilbao. His strengths are climbing and GC, while his sprint and time trial capabilities are less developed.

Table 2. Points per specialty

BIBs

Bilbao is starting his sixth consecutive Giro d'Italia this year and his 14th grand tour. He is starting with BIB 43. He started most often with a BIB ending on 2, implying he had most often a supporting role in the team.

Table 3. Starts per BIB

Reliability

Bilbao finished all the 13 grand tours he started. In fact, he has only three DNFs to his name in the past 5 years in all races.

Table 4. DNFs in last 5 years

He finished 3 times in the top-10 of a grand tour, with a 5th place in the 2020 Giro d'Italia as his best result.

Table 5. Best final GC results in GTs

Can he do better this year and go for the podium or is he even a contender for final GC victory? His main weakness is the Time Trial, but this years route is more in favour of the climbers than the TT specialists. In fact, the number of Time Trial kilometres is the lowest since 1962 when there was no time trial stage. Furthermore, comparing his TT results over the last 3 years with the other GC favorites, he even ranks third.

Table 6. TT kms per edition

Table 7. Time trial points last 3 years

What more

This years Giro has 9 stages with a ProfileScore over 246 with the top stage to Blockhaus with a impressive 458 score. Pello Bilbao finished already 4 times in the top-10 of a 400+ stage, and won stage 20 in the Giro of 2019 with a 371 profile score.

Table 8. Top-3 results sorted by highest profile score

With the bulk of the climbing in the last week, it is interesting to see that Bilbao improved his position in 11 of the 13 grand tours he finished.

Table 9. Third week GT historical performance for rider

If you are looking for a GC outsider for your Giro poule, Pello Bilbao could very well be a rewarding pick.