The 2008 Giro d'Italia was the 91st running of the Giro d'Italia, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It began in Palermo on 10 May and ended in Milan on 1 June. Twenty-two teams entered the race, which was won by Spaniard Alberto Contador of the cycling team. Second and third respectively were Italians Riccardo Riccò and Marzio Bruseghin.
Contador first took the race lead after the second mountain stage, to Marmolada, by finishing nearly fifteen minutes ahead of previous race leader Gabriele Bosisio. The race's overall classification had been headed for several days beforehand by Giovanni Visconti, who participated in a breakaway in the sixth stage which won him sufficient time to hold the race leader's pink jersey for more than a week. In the race's final week, Contador faced stern challenges from Riccò and defending Giro champion Danilo Di Luca. Though Contador did not win any stage, his performances were consistently strong enough to remain ahead through to the conclusion of the race.
Team appeared to perform quite well in the race, coming away with four stage wins and victory in the mountains classification and the Trofeo Fast Team. In August 2008, mountains classification winner Emanuele Sella was announced to have tested positive for methoxy polyethylene glycol-epoetin beta (better known as Mircera, an erythropoietin derivative) at an out-of-competition control held by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). He subsequently admitted his doping, and named teammate Matteo Priamo as his supplier. Both riders were subsequently suspended. Though as of April 2010 no definitive positive results have come to light from samples taken during the Giro, retesting of those samples has reportedly revealed six to seven presumptive positives for Mircera. Riccò, who tested positive for the drug at the 2008 Tour de France, is among those suspected of having given positive tests in the Giro, as is Sella.
Teams
Twenty-two teams participated in the 2008 Giro. These included 16 UCI ProTour teams, and six UCI Professional Continental teams. Of the 18 ProTour teams, the two left out were and . Two other ProTour teams, and , were left off the first list of teams announced by RCS Sport, the organizers of the Giro. This list also included a further Professional Continental team, , which was later excluded. Astana and Team High Road were both later added, with Astana's invitation coming just six days before the event began.
The 22 teams who took part in the race were:
Race previews and favorites
The 2008 Giro featured an assortment of contenders for the overall victory. Defending champion Danilo Di Luca had faced potential bans which would have kept him out of the race, after investigations into his involvement with the Oil for Drugs scandal and an irregular doping test given after stage 17 of the 2007 Giro d'Italia, either of which could have resulted in a two-year suspension. Though he was suspended for three months because of Oil for Drugs, he was cleared by the Italian National Olympic Committee of any wrongdoing in the 2007 Giro, and was thus permitted to start.
The late invitation of to the race provided three potential contenders: 2007 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, third-place finisher from that race Levi Leipheimer, and Andreas Klöden. One analysis of pre-race favorites considered Klöden to be the strongest of them, while another considered Contador to be the race's biggest favorite after his wins at the recently run Vuelta al País Vasco and Vuelta a Castilla y León. Both Di Luca and Contador had strong domestiques (support riders) by their sides, with Di Luca joined by two-time Giro d'Italia champion Paolo Savoldelli, Gabriele Bosisio, and Alessandro Spezialetti, and Contador by Leipheimer and Klöden. Other riders named as overall contenders included Denis Menchov, Gilberto Simoni, Vincenzo Nibali, Riccardo Riccò, Mauricio Soler, Marzio Bruseghin, Emanuele Sella, Evgeni Petrov, Franco Pellizotti, and Juan Manuel Gárate. Unibet.com's odds-on favorite was Klöden. 2004 Giro d'Italia winner Damiano Cunego chose to skip the race to better prepare for the Tour de France, adding to speculation that this would be the first Giro since 1996 to feature a non-Italian winner.