The final stage of the 2020 Giro d'Italia will take in Colle dell'Agnello, Col d'Isol and Col de Montgenèvre before a summit finish in Sestiere. Details of this stage were confirmed by La Gazzetta dello Sport prior to the Giro 2020 route announcement in Milan on Thursday.

The 200-km-long stage 20 will be a grueling one, with a total climbing distance of about 5,000 m. The May 30 stage will start in the Langhe hills of Alba, home of Ferrero Chocolate and writer Beppe Fenoglio, with a steady climb in the first half of the stage.

The first climb is the Colle della Nierro, 21.3 km long with a maximum gradient of 15%. The summit is 2744 meters above sea level, which is the border between Italy and France. Vincenzo Nibali attacked this summit and lost Maria Rosa when Steven Kruijswijk crashed on the snow-covered descent. Nibali won the stage in Lisle and took the pink jersey the next day in Sant'Anna di Vinadio. [The famous scene of Fausto Coppi riding alone between Cuneo and Pinerolo in 1949 is still fresh in the memory; the 2017 Tour de France was a summit finish, but Izoard returned to the Giro after a 13-year absence; the 14.2-km climb through the cursed Cassé desert, the summit 2360 m above sea level.

After a quick descent to Briançon, the race returned to Italy with the third climb of the day, the Montgenèvre Pass (Italian: Monginevro). The climb is the shortest of the day at 8.4 km with a maximum gradient of 9%; in 2000, when Francesco Casagrande handed over the maglia rosa to Stefano Garzelli, this climb was included in the time trial on the final day.

Meanwhile, the grand finale is the familiar climb up to Sestriere, a ski resort developed by the Anielli family in the 1930s. The climb was on route when Chris Froome grabbed pink on his way to Bardonecchia in 2018 and has appeared as a summit finish six times in the past, most recently on the final day of the 2015 Giro d'Italia with Fabio Aru winning.

Giro director Mauro Veni will be well aware that stages featuring three mountains over 2,000 meters in elevation in May have an inherent risk of being changed if snow falls. In the 2019 Giro, for example, Passo Gavia at 2,618 meters elevation was removed from stage 16 due to avalanche risk.

It was previously rumored that the 2020 Giro's Alpine finale would include an additional 7 km of dirt section to Monte Freiteve, but RCS Sport was concerned that the climb would be too difficult in case of bad weather.

Media reports suggest that the final week of the 2020 Giro will be particularly grueling and will also feature heavily on the Stelvio. The full route will be announced at 16:50 CET on Thursday afternoon at the RAI studios in Milan, where Peter Sagan is expected to announce his intention to make his Giro debut in 2020.

The 2020 Giro will start in Budapest on Saturday, May 9 with an 8.6 km individual time trial. The Giro will spend three days in Hungary, with stage finishes in Gyor and Nagykanizsa. Unlike the overseas starts in Israel, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Denmark, there will be no rest day before the first stage in Italy.

The Giro is expected to finish in Milan on May 31, with the race concluding with an individual time trial that will finish in Piazza Duomo, as Tom Dumoulin did in 2017 when he won the overall.