The first grand tour of the season is almost upon us, as the world's best cyclists traverse Italy in the hunt for the pink jersey, or maglia rosa.
Last year's champion, Australian Jai Hindley, will not be in Italy to defend his crown, instead setting his sights on the Tour de France.
However, there are still plenty of talking points ahead of the three-week, 3,489-kilometre race.
Here are the five things you need to know.
Jack Haig hoping to cash in on some much-needed good fortune
Jai Hindley became just the second Australian in history to win one of cycling's grand tours when he claimed victory in Verona last year.
That performance was far from an outlier, with Hindley's success being the fourth time an Aussie has stood on the podium in the seven previous grand tours.
One of those podium finishers was Jack Haig at the 2021 Vuelta a España.
His third-place finish was remarkable in that it came hot on the heels of his disappointment at having missed the Tokyo Olympics after crashing out of the Tour de France with a broken collarbone.
Haig has been unfortunate at cycling's premier stage race.
He also crashed out of last year's Tour, breaking his wrist on stage five that prematurely ended his season.
The 29-year-old has slowly built into this year's race, finishing 11th at the Vuelta a Andalucia and 10th in Paris-Nice.
However, a third-placed finish at the recent Tour of the Alps shows he has the form in the high mountains following a solid training block in Teneriffe.
The two main favourites, Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič are likely to be the riders to beat, but that does mean that the final podium place could be up for grabs.
Michael Matthews looking for first stage win since 2015
Michael Matthews will return to the Giro d'Italia for the first time in three years with the sole aim of adding to his two stage wins as leader of the Jayco-Alula team.
Matthews has worn the pink leader's jersey twice, in 2014 and 2015, and has good memories of the race.
He'll be keen to get back into a positive mindset after a crash cruelled his chances at the Ronde van Vlaanderen.
"I am eager to get back to racing," Matthews told his team website after his "rollercoaster" season thus far, which included a bout of COVID.
"This year's course is very demanding, but there will be some good opportunities for me for stage victories and we have a well-balanced and experienced team.
"It is really motivating to have a slightly different calendar this year and to return to this great grand tour."
Matthews will lead a team that features two other Australian riders, Michael Hepburn and Callum Scotson.
World champion hoping for back-to-back grand tour wins
Remco Evenepoel has, somewhat incredibly, gone under the radar to start this season.
A winner of the World Championships in Wollongong last September, hot on the heels of his triumph at the Vuelta a España, that might seem quite odd.
But the start of this season was dominated by classics riders Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel, plus an Eddy Merckx-like run from Tadej Pogačar, who won nine of the 19 days of racing he started this year — a run ended by his unfortunate broken wrist at Liège-Bastogne-Liège that robbed the cycling world of a thrilling head-to-head battle with eventual winner Evenepoel.
Evenpoel's dominant victory at La Doyenne helped remind cycling fans that the 23-year-old Belgian stands on the same level as van Aert, van der Poel and Pogačar as one of the best-rounded cyclists of the modern era.
The 23-year-old Belgian now has his sights set on winning a maiden Giro title, where he would be the first to win in the rainbow jersey since Eddy Merckx in 1972.
His participation at the 2020 Giro marked his return from serious injury, although he ended up crashing out of that race on stage 17. This will be just his second participation in the race.
Roglič hunting for a return to glory with an Aussie parachuted in to assist
The man many expect to challenge Evenepoel is three-time Vuelta winner Primož Roglič — and the 33-year-old Slovenian will have an Aussie as a key lieutenant in his corner.
Rohan Dennis, who is set to retire at the end of the season, has come into the Team Jumbo-Visma squad after COVID ruled out a number of other star names.
The seven-time grand tour stage winner and two-time world time trial champion will ride in his fourth Giro and, with almost 70km-worth of time trials, may eye up a sneaky stage win.
Roglič, meanwhile, has had a stellar start to the season, winning the overall classification at the Tirreno-Adriatico and the Volta a Catalunya.
He has a third-placed finish at the Giro already on his CV, but has failed to finish three of his last four grand tour races, hinting at a fragility that was entirely absent during his peak era. He did win the other, though.
Kaden Groves, Jay Vine looking to build on breakout seasons
Queenslanders Kaden Groves and Jay Vine had breakout seasons last year.
Groves has claimed wins on two stages at the Volta a Catalunya and also won the Volta Limburg Classic.
Vine won two stages at the Vuelta, the Esports World Championships on Zwift, the mountains classification at the Étoile de Bessèges and came second overall at both the Tours of Turkey and Norway.
He backed that up with the overall crown at the Tour Down Under.
Both will line up as support riders in this year's Giro, with Vine competing for UAE Team Emirates and Groves in the blue of Alpecin-Deceuninck.
Although claiming overall honours may be beyond Vine given the talent at the top end of the field, there are plenty of mountains in the Giro — 51,400 metres of vertical gain in fact — so a stage win should not be off the cards.
For Groves, he may well target any of the eight flat stages and even a couple of the lumpier ones as well, rivalling compatriot Matthews for stage wins.
How do I watch the Giro d'Italia?
The Giro starts on May 6, with coverage on SBS On Demand from 9:40pm AEST.
SBS will show all 21 stages of this year's race, culminating in the final stage on Sunday May 28 in Rome.
