This little Giro d’Italia tidbit comes from CyclingNews:

In a report written at the request of many riders who took part in the Giro d’Italia 2006, José Luís Rubiera Vigil, a delegate of the riders’ union CPA within the UCI Pro Tour Council, denounced the “difficult conditions” the riders were facing during the event. Especially the length of the transfers during the race (2,700 km, as well as 1,500 from Belgium to Italy and from the South to the North of the Peninsula) represented “an unbearable extra work” according to the CPA.

“The late arrivals in the hotels for the various teams, an obvious consequence of those long transfers, prevented on several occasions the riders having the massage they deserved and needed,” a communiqué stated. “The rest days were wrongly programmed (the first one after only four days) without forgetting the fact that they were spent in travelling. The courses were excessively difficult, as the fact proves it of having to use gear ratios which are usually not used in races (34×25 and 36×27). With regard to safety, the finish in Sestri Levante was a true danger, to avoid absolutely in the future.”