The Giro Rosa begins today (YAY!) with a two-kilometre prologue in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Karol Ann Canual (Velocio-SRAM) will kick off the ten-day Italian Grand Tour at 7 p.m.

We have a full schedule of Giro Rosa cover planned for you, including a daily round-up of the best content we’ve seen out of each stage; however, given that the prologue is at night –and there’s so much great pre-race chatter, we thought we’d do today’s round-up before the stage star. (And who knows? -maybe we’ll do a post-stage round-up, too).

(Can you tell we’re super excited to get this show on the road?)

All about the opening Prologue:

Velofocus has done a fantastic stage-by-stage preview for each of the ten stages of the prologue. He discusses the two-kilometre opener here.

Karol Ann Canual (Velocio-SRAM) is the first rider to race tonight, and Lucinda Brand (Rabo Liv) is the last. Canual will leave the start house at 7 p.m. Not quite two hours later, at 8:51 p.m., Brand will be the last to roll out. Find a complete list of starters and times here.

The prologue will be streamed live on RAISport2 beginning at 7:30 p.m. (that’s 3:30 a.m. AEST). You can tune in here. Have those VPNs fired-up as this one is geo-restricted. UPDATED: The most recent information we’ve seen suggests that perhaps the prologue will not be streamed live after all – and will instead be shown at 10:30 p.m. (6:30 a.m. AEST). If there is a live stream, it will be at the link above, and we’ll make sure to share that on Twitter. Same goes for highlights as opposed to live stream. Stay tuned!

Keep in mind: Annemiek van Vleuten (Bigla) won the last prologue on the calendar –the opening stage of the Euskal Emakumeen Bira. She’ll start tonight’s stage as a favourite. Giro Rosa overall contender Anna van der Breggen (Rabo Liv) won the EnergieWacht Tour prologue back in April and could contend for the top step of the podium tonight.

Giro Rosa Presentation:

The Giro Rosa presentation was live streamed last night. If you missed it, you can watch the archived video here. This was our first opportunity to see a lot of new national champion kits. We particularly liked the Spanish National Road Champion kit Wiggle Honda made for Anna Sanchis.

Looking for images out of the team presentation? Cor Vos has you covered.

Read-up on Ella

Before you tune into the prologue, make sure you’ve read:

• The Ella Giro Rosa guide.
• A Q&A with two-time winner Mara Abbott
• Loren Rowney’s Giro Rosa ‘stay sane’ packing tips
• This feature on Carmen Small about her move to Bigla and riding her fourth Giro Rosa with her new team

Beyond Ella

Beyond Ella, there’s plenty of Giro Rosa reading and viewing:

• Kasia Niewadoma shares her stage win ambitions in this CyclingNews feature
• VeloNews reviews the course and tips Mara Abbott (Wiggle Honda) and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot (Rabo Liv) as their pre-race favoruites
• We love this pre-race video interview with Ashleigh Moolman (Bigla)
• Lotto Soudal Ladies speak with Elena Cecchini before her first Giro Rosa start

Tweets and ‘grams:

These are some of our favourite social media posts since the Giro Rosa presentation last night. We’re also (obviously) digging the #TiffTakeover over on Ella Instagram.