A collection of rest day memories
Plus Tappone, a new episode of KM0 is out now for Friends of the Podcast
KM0 – Tappone
The latest episode of KM0 is online now and will have automatically dropped into your feed if you are a Friends of the Podcast subscriber. (Please note that’s a different subscription to The 11.01 Cappuccino and you can sign up as a Friend below). Join Daniel and Brian on the road as they explore the concept and history of the ‘tappone’ or Queen Stage, such as Sunday’s epic to Livigno won by Tadej Pogačar.
Listen to the trailer here:
by Lionel Birnie
There’s something about waking up on the rest day of a Grand Tour that always summoned for me a combination of the feelings I used to experience on the first and last days of the school holidays. There’s the excitement of being ‘off’ with seemingly limitless possibilities stretching before me, and yet the thought that it’s the last day and it’s back to work tomorrow.
There’s usually things to do – an episode of KM0 to finish, or some admin, such as sorting through a fat envelope of receipts gathered over the previous week or replying to emails that have gone unanswered for days, or a press conference to attend (although since the pandemic these are now held as video calls) – but there’s also a chance to clean and tidy The Cycling Podcar, do some laundry, call home for more than five minutes, and have a relaxed lunch without worrying how many kilometres they have left to race.
Hopefully Daniel and Brian will grab a bit of rest today before the final push on to not-quite-Rome later this week but in the meantime, here are my Giro rest day memories from the first two editions I covered for The Cycling Podcast.
2016
The first time The Cycling Podcast covered the Giro d’Italia with daily episodes was the year the grande partenza was held in the Netherlands. There had been huge crowds in Apeldoorn, Arnhem and Nijmegen as Tom Dumoulin and Marcel Kittel dominated the opening weekend. We recorded one episode in a busy square getting slightly tipsy on Giro fever and Dutch beers as we toasted Richard’s birthday. I refused to sing Happy Birthday at the end of the episode for fear of breaching copyright – a decision I was roundly (and rightly) mocked for.
For reasons I didn’t understand at the time, and which make even less sense now, Daniel went home from the Netherlands leaving Richard and I to record the debut Giro episodes on Italian soil. We spent the night in a Yo Hotel in Amsterdam airport, which was a bit like sleeping in a shoe box. Separate shoe boxes, I should say. Then, in the morning, we got a flight to Lamezia Terme, where we were met with the Maserati that had been lent to us for the Italian stages.
Within half an hour of taking over at the wheel, Richard had reversed into an ornamental flowerpot while parallel parking in a narrow side street. (The following day he bumped into an ornamental flowerpot in an otherwise completely empty hotel car park).
Other than that, we had a restful day and headed into town in the evening in search of somewhere to eat. Everywhere was busy, so we ended up in a little cafe-style pizzeria. I didn’t have high hopes because I’d spotted cans of Tennent’s Lager in the fridge. Tennent’s has a dubious reputation in the UK, largely because of the super-strength version which apparently tastes like paint stripper. The owner asked where we were from and Richard said ‘Scotland’. Whether she appreciated she was presenting us with Scotland’s national drink (I’m only joking Scotland!), she then produced two complimentary cans of Tennent’s (not the super-strength version).
I Tweeted a photo of the can with some kind of witty comment about Richard fitting right in now we’d reached Italy and Daniel replied to say something like: ‘What are you two clowns doing?’
The second rest day that year followed the ‘Wine Trial’ in Chianti won by Primoz Roglič, back when the fact he’d previously been a ski jumper was still an interesting bit of trivia. But the story of what happened on the long, twisty road back to our hotel will have to wait for another day, and possibly for a smaller audience than the tens of thousands who’ll read this… if only to protect all our reputations.
2017
After an opening weekend in Sardinia, we had a day in Sicily and took collection of our not-at-all-conspicuous gleaming white Maserati.
As Daniel wrote in our book, A Journey Through the Cycling Year: ‘I sleep badly, miss my morning run and we have our first Cycling Podcast barney of the Giro on the way to Team Sky’s hotel in Palermo. The blow-up is an HD snapshot of our typical traits: Richard being Buffaloey, with every missed turning and lost minute inching Napalm ever closer to a stress explosion… and me playing the sulky, impenetrable, wantonly obtuse teenager in the back of the car.
‘Fortunately, we all come round and it turns into a relatively relaxed rest day. I manage to call Fernando Gaviria ‘Francisco’ at a Quick Step press thingy. There are a few nervous moments when a group of middle-aged men whom I imagine to have names like Vito, Rosario and Pasquale seem to very deliberately form a semi-circle around one side of our (white!) Maserati just as we’re about to pull away after our lunch stop. The only restaurant near our digs is the same joint as last night, with its laminated menus and deep-fried sea-life that could just as easily have been fished out of a nearby squash court as from the ocean. But, but, I’ve managed to get out for my run, we’re all friends again and, yes, we’re still at the Giro. So, breathe…’
Daniel had recommended an excellent book about the origins and history of the Sicilian Mafia called Cosa Nostra by John Dickie, and so everywhere I went I felt I was being watched from upstairs windows and alleyways. Every hillside looked like it could be home to a network of tunnels and a Mafia hideaway. So I was a bit jumpy when those men Daniel mentioned surrounded the car. Later in the afternoon, we stopped at an ice cream place and a gaggle of police officers came in and surrounded us as we looked at the tubs of all the different flavours. Perhaps it was the Maserati raising suspicions again. I calmed down when they ordered. There was something quite disarming about seeing the officers with their leather boots, dark jackets and the white gun holsters round their waists, licking little tubs of lemon sorbet trying not to get the drips on their uniforms. No one got caught in accidental crossfire by policemen eating ice creams – not even in John Dickie’s book.
I wrote about the second rest day in our book, A Journey Through the Cycling Year: ‘In all my years covering the Grand Tours, I have never missed lunch on a rest day until today. I am still not quite sure how it happened. After a leisurely breakfast, Daniel and I sit down to record an episode of KM0. The subject is The Double, and whether a rider could win the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France in the same season. [Editor’s note: The more things change the more they stay the same.]
‘As Nairo Quintana has just taken the pink jersey it seems logical to wonder whether he has what it takes to become the first rider since Marco Pantani in 1998 to win both. We chew over the various factors that make it a much more difficult proposition these days and in the end come to the conclusion that The Double (certainly in terms of winning the Giro and Tour) will not be done this season.
‘By the time we've recorded the episode and sent it to our producer to polish and tighten, it's lunch time. Our bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Spoleto doesn't offer lunch, so I decide to head to town to find a launderette and somewhere to eat. I have success on one front but not the other and as I load Daniel's pants and T-shirts into one machine and mine into another, hunger causes my stomach to do a passable impression of a washing machine by gurgling loudly.
‘Once the laundry is dried and folded I head back to the hotel and then Simon, Daniel and I drive to a gelateria on the outskirts of town. We need a picture to illustrate The Double episode and Daniel has come up with the idea of photographing two scoops of ice cream – one pink, one yellow to represent the maglia rosa and maillot jaune.
‘I learn about Italian gelateria etiquette. If a customer orders chocolate and vanilla, he or she would expect to see the chocolate served first with the vanilla on top, not the other way round.
‘Just as my stomach is greeting the first drops of strawberry ice cream and wondering if this is all there's going to be for lunch, I manage to drop my ice cream on the floor. I watch it fall in slow motion and splatter at my feet. As metaphors for cycling's increasingly elusive Double go, this seems apposite. Finally, I have to drive to Foligno to meet former professional Dan Lloyd for a quick interview in the Maserati. As I ask him about the highs and lows of riding the Giro I realise I've driven into a very narrow dead-end. Dan comes to the rescue and, showing impressive spatial awareness and the sort of full-lock-to-full-lock steering wheel technique a fork lift truck driver would be proud of, gets us out of a tight spot.
‘When I finally get something to eat, in the delightful Il Tempio del Gusto in Spoleto, I munch through half a dozen breadsticks like a cartoon alligator demolishing a wooden jetty.’
2023
Last year I wasn’t on the Giro but the two rest days were nevertheless memorable. On the first, Daniel and I dialled up 2020 Giro champion Tao Geoghegan Hart for an exclusive conversation about the race so far. He’d had a brilliant opening week and sat fourth overall behind Evenepoel, Thomas and Roglič. He was in an enlightening and expansive mood and the KM0 episode we made was, I thought, a great listen. Of course it turned out to be a case of The Curse of The Cycling Podcast because two days later he crashed out of the Giro – not that the two events were connected.
On the next rest day, I headed down to Bath to meet The Voice of Cycling and The King – Rob Hatch and Sean Kelly – for a bike ride. We ended up inadvertently paying homage to a building that is to British television comedy what the Gavia is to the Giro d’Italia. You can listen to the episode Only Fools and Cyclists here.
Il Barone’s photo gallery
The Girovagando case from DVine Cellars
The 2024 Girovagando case of six wines, curated by our friends at DVine Cellars, is available to buy now. My case arrived last week, and I ordered a second one for our neighbour, who is from the very north of Italy a few kilometres from the Swiss border, as a thank you for removing a hedge in our back garden.
Stage 16 of our Girovagando coverage will be on air tomorrow night, following the rest day. Join Daniel and Brian rested, refreshed and ready for the race to resume. Will Pog stick or twist now he’s got a lead of more than six minutes? The 11.01 Cappuccino will be back on Wednesday with the second half of the definitive list of KM0 episodes from the Giro d’Italia.
A big thank you to MAAP for supporting The Cycling Podcast. Check out the full range of clothing to make you look the part on, and off, the bike at maap.cc
These reminiscences take me back to recent Giros and my trip this month to Italy. Thanks for reminding me of La Dolce Vita!
Fun to revisit previous years!