Well, they're certainly not making it easy for the riders in this Giro, that's for sure. After the carnage of the Netherlands came a Tuscan dirt road hell on Saturday with Cadel Evans proving just what a worthy world champion he is.
Stage seven's decisive moment funnily enough came before the gravelled sections of uphill roads, which had turned to a veritable mud slide owing to the lashing rain.
There are definitely advantages riding close to your team-mates, but the obvious pitfall is that when one goes down, a cataclysmic domino effect can ensue.
When have you last seen a race's top three riders in the general classification all wipe out simultaneously? But just that happened when Nibali, Basso and Agnoli all hit the deck on a sweeping right-hander 33km from the finish and slid painfully into the grass verge.
Struck with such rotten luck, the pink jersey was up against it before the stage's real killer segment had even begun.
Unwritten cycling etiquette quite rightly went out of the window as Vino, Cunego, Scarponi and a few others capitalised on the Liquigas triple bombshell. It was each to his own out there - and the Giro was all the better for it.
But Evans had his work cut out. The Australian's tempo was derailed by the split in the peloton and Cuddles, riding in the best form of his life right now, still had to bridge the gap between him and the Vino group before he could even start dreaming of the stage win.
The final 30km of dirt roads to Montalcino was a perfect advertisement for the sport - and, rather cynically, a perfect explanation to why so many riders take loads of drugs.
On that note, it was one former doping fiend who laid down the hammer on the final Civitella climb. Caked in mud, his face pink and his puffy eyes as if he was about to cry, Vino upped the tempo, somehow preventing his wheels from spinning in the mire.
His pursuers held on, and once they entered the hilltop town the dynamic changed yet again. Sludgy gravel tracks were replaced with narrow flagstoned roads and it was on this surface - just like at the Fleche Walloon - that Evans prevailed.
This was racing like the old days - a stage unseen in any Grand Tour of recent years. Fittingly, the prize went to Evans, a rider transformed since his win in Mendrisio last September. The Australian has not only added the word 'attack' to his vocabulary, he has mastered the art of doing exactly that - and in explosive fashion.
Nibali and Basso cannot be discounted just yet - but it will take a lot for them to claw back time on Vinokourov, back in pink for the second time in a week. There once was a time when former dopers came back from their bans weaker. Vino, 36, seems to be better than ever. Poor Alberto Contador...
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I realised right from the fast start that this was going to be a hard stage, and today's last 40 kilometres were even more difficult than Paris-Roubaix." Vino's words would carry more weight had the Kazakh actually ridden the Hell of the North before.
Follow Blazin' Saddles throughout the Giro on www.twitter.com/saddleblaze.