Al Dente's Inferno and the AI threshing machine

Crashes, Covid and terrible weather at the Giro d'Italia

The windscreen wipers working overtime on The Cycling Podcar at the Giro d'Italia.

by Lionel Birnie

The Giro d’Italia is the self-styled ‘hardest race in the most beautiful place’ but this year’s edition has been plagued by Covid, crashes, occasionally lukewarm racing, and terrible weather. The rain has fallen pretty much every day and riders have been frozen to the core. There’s the prospect of stages being shortened, or mountain passes being excised from the route as if removed by a ruthless sub-editor.

In this morning’s episode of Kilometre 0, La Corsa Rotta, Daniel and Brian asked the question: Does the Giro need a rethink? It’s a great listen, presenting a variety of points of view ranging from a call for shorter stages, for more hilltop finishes and perhaps even a swap with the Vuelta a España on the calendar.

I’m not convinced the Giro needs to mimic the Vuelta by shortening stages. I said earlier in the race that one of the things I like about the Giro is the sense of a slow burn which gives a chance to see Italy in all its glory before the race bursts into life in the second half. Of course, the weather has been sub-optimal and at times sub-zero and so Italy has not looked her brilliant best bathed in sunshine and decorated with pink because it’s been cold, wet and gloomy.

Losing riders to illness and crashes is, unfortunately, often part of the story, especially when the weather is bad. You have to go back 20 years, to 2003, when fewer than 100 riders made it all the way to the finish of the Giro but it’s not without precedent that riders pull out of grand tours ten at a time.

Until a couple of decades ago, the Giro used to finish later, at the end of the first week of June and sometimes as late as mid-June, and that can make all the difference with the weather. But the desire to keep the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France apart – perhaps to tempt the star riders to tackle both – was one of the factors that led to the Giro starting earlier. Perhaps someone needs to look at the data and recognise that very few, if any, of the top riders do both the Giro and the Tour in the same season these days and so the gap between the two could be closed.

Thursday

Stage winner: Mads Pedersen
Maglia rosa: Andreas Leknessund

Not for the first time this Giro, I was quite envious of Daniel and Brian as they headed to the Quartieri Spagnoli to discover the heart and soul of Napoli.

The city is in raptures at the moment because the football team has won the Italian championship – lo Scudetto – for only the third time in the club’s history. The previous two titles – in 1987 and 1990 – were during Diego Maradona’s time and the city’s favourite adopted son is celebrated all over the place with flags, banners and pictures painted on buildings.

Napoli is also Ciro Scognamiglio’s home city and he is a big fan of the football team so I am glad they’ve ended their long wait to win the title again.

For the second Giro in a row there’s a stage starting and finishing in the city – last year’s was won by Thomas De Gendt – and as I watched the early kilometres of the race on television I wondered why we’d not gone in search of Maradona when we were there a year ago. Then I had my answer as the helicopter hovered over Pompeii, the extraordinary Roman city buried under ash and pumice when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.

Daniel and I made a flying visit to Pompeii and explored the ruins before heading into the city. It was one of the most memorable experiences of any grand tour and a reminder that the races – and our coverage – are about the journey and the sense of discovery too, not just the watts and the tactics.

The stage itself ended in heartbreak for Simon Clarke and Alessandro De Marchi, who were caught within touching distance of the finish line after spending all day in the break.

Between the episode recapping the stage and the Kilometre 0, Napule: City of Gods, I felt like I completed my picture of Napoli following our visit last year.

Friday

Stage winner: Davide Bais
Maglia rosa: Andreas Leknessund

More memories of grand tours past came flooding back as Daniel and Brian headed to Gran Sasso d’Italia. In 2018, there was a grande casino – a big mess – at the top of the mountain as riders joined the throng of people waiting for the cable car to take them down the mountain. I showed my press pass, squeezed into the cabin and tried to ignore the fact we were clearly way over the weight limit, even if the riders who were in there with us were bringing the average weight down a bit.

This time sounded like it was another big mess but Lucky Larry Warbasse took charge of matters, leading a bunch of his colleagues from the peloton to the front of the queue.

The stage itself was a predictable snooze. The length of the stage (218 kilometres), the size of the break (small) and the headwind on the final climb all told us what would happen.

It wasn’t quite Mario Cipollini stopping for a pizza or Matt White buying ice creams en route, but we did see Simone Velasco of Astana passing round arrosticini – skewers of barbecued lamb – which is very popular in Abruzzo. It reminded me of an imbroglio of our own during ‘Our Giro’ when all racing was suspended and we created a virtual three-week tour celebrating the Giro and Italy. I cooked a few dishes proposed by food writer Felicity Cloake, one of which was arrosticini. As we were having a family meal in the garden rather than preparing an authentic feast for some Italian visitors, I whipped up a garlic mayonnaise sauce (not typically Abruzzese) to go with them. Daniel reacted as if I’d committed a culinary sin greater than enjoying a cappuccino with my Hawaiian pizza.

When I spoke to Daniel for the Pausa Cappuccino I joked that all Velasco needed was a bidon full of garlic sauce to go with the kebabs. The idea of garlic sauce served in a cycling water bottle is not as far-fetched as it sounds. After the now legendary stage to La Planche des Belles Filles, when Pog turned the tables on Rog in the Tour de France time trial, Richard, François and I were running very late for dinner and the best we could do was stop at a kebab shop in Luxeuil-les-Bains. When our food came, the owner plonked a Tacx-branded bidon down on the table. I gave it a squirt, out of curiosity more than anything else, and out came a jet of garlic sauce.

The stage itself was memorable for Davide Bais's gutsy victory from the break, even if the GC riders kept their powder dry. And with the weather so far this year that’s about the only thing that is remaining dry. There was a little sprintino between Remco and Rog but the first mountain stage offered few clues of what was to come.

Ciro made a welcome appearance during Brian’s Tale of the Tappa, we heard a bit about the history of the cappuccino, Daniel revealed that an unwell rider in one team was being quarantined from the others by being taken to the starts and the hotel before and after stages in a team car rather than on the bus (note, he wasn’t referring to Filippo Ganna, Rog or Remco), and Brian had his crystal ball out predicting how Saturday’s stage would go.

Saturday

Stage winner: Ben Healy
Maglia rosa: Andreas Leknessund

Brian was pretty much right, in that a break went clear and the decisive move was made on the Cappuccini climb. What he got wrong was that Ben Healy – the revelation of the Ardennes-and-not-Ardennes Classics – would make his bid for freedom the first time up the Cappuccini, with around 50 kilometres to go. Even EF Education-Easy Post’s sports director Tejay Van Garderen admitted the plan was for Healy to wait for the second climb but that they couldn’t hold him back.

When Daniel and I recorded our Pausa Cappuccino segment, I’d urged patience in the face of Daniel’s frustration that little seemed to be happening in the race. He didn’t have to be patient for long. Only about an hour, in fact, because finally there was some action. Primoz Roglič, Geraint Thomas and Tao Geoghegan Hart, perhaps sensing some weakness in Remco Evenepoel, made their move. We’d been waiting for Rog to do something and this long-range Roglification chipped 14 seconds off Evenepoel’s advantage.

There was some typical Giro controversy about which teams had chosen to get their riders away from Gran Sasso d’Italia by helicopter, Daniel explained the story behind Fossombrone football club’s distinctive jersey, and we got the first ‘fwoh’ of the season from Geraint Thomas, who also revealed that Roglič had told him he had Covid.

That particular joke sounded much less funny 24 hours later.

Kilometre 0 and the Friends of the Podcast system

Kilometre 0 at the Giro d’Italia (and the Tour de France later this summer) will be available for Friends of the Podcast subscribers.

We fund The Cycling Podcast’s coverage through a combination of sponsorship, advertising and Friends of the Podcast subscriptions.

An annual Friends of the Podcast subscription costs £20 (approximately $25 US, $37 Australian or €22), although there are options to pay more if you wish.

Each year we release a programme of special episodes for subscribers and this year, following the expiration of our long-running title sponsorship deal, that also includes Kilometre 0.

Friends of the Podcast episodes are available on a separate feed, which can be added to most of the popular podcast apps (including Apple, Spotify and Google) in a couple of easy clicks. Episodes then show up in your feed automatically as they are released.

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Sunday

Stage winner: Remco Evenepoel
Maglia rosa: Remco Evenepoel

Print media is sometimes cursed by being overtaken by events. I remember working on the 2006 Tour de France preview edition of a magazine that featured five pre-race favourites on the cover, none of whom started the race because of the Operation Puerto doping scandal.

The immediacy of a daily podcast means it is rarely as vulnerable to the same fate.

Today was an exception. About an hour after the episode went live, Remco Evenepoel announced on social media that he had Covid and would be pulling out of the race.

Despite not having the big news of the day, the episode recapping the Cesena time trial stood up remarkably well. In fact, the signs were there that all was not well with the stage winner and new race leader.

Evenepoel might have expected his winning margin to be more than the single second by which he beat Geraint Thomas. Daniel wondered if Remco’s form was a little al dente. ‘Al Dente’s Inferno,’ said Brian, as quick as a flash. The line of the Giro so far.

They explained that in the press conference Evenepoel had said he was feeling a bit under the weather and had a sniffle.

Later that evening, we knew why he looked so tired after the stage, with big bags under bloodshot eyes. All of a sudden, the Giro was thrown wide open.

Photos by Brian Nygaard

Tuesday

Stage winner: Magnus Cort
Maglia rosa: Geraint Thomas

The weather worsened and the Giro lost riders by the fistful. Evenepoel, Uran and Pozzovivo were among those with Covid. Masks were back and so interviews with riders have that slightly muffled quality that brings the post-lockdown races back to mind.

At some point in the day, Daniel and Brian passed near the town where il Barone’s accountant lives. I pictured some grand villa perched on a hillside.

Daniel spoke to Patrick Lefevere, who had made a beeline for the press room to give La Gazzetta dello Sport a piece of his mind. Lefevere was unhappy with a piece written by the veteran – and respected – Pier Bergonzi which cast aspersions on Evenepoel’s decision to pull out while he had the pink jersey. ‘I’m not angry, I’m disappointed,’ said Lefevere, as if scolding an errant child.

Wednesday

Stage winner: Pascal Ackermann
Maglia rosa: Geraint Thomas

On Monday’s rest day, Daniel and I dialled up Tao Geoghegan Hart to talk about the Giro so far, his quest for a Fossombrone football shirt and the looming menace of Covid that hangs over the peloton. He talked eloquently about the grand tours being much more than a simple test of the legs. Staying healthy and avoiding crashes are as important to the riders aiming for overall victory. The first nine days had gone perfectly – more or less, because losing seconds in the crash that blighted the first sprint stage still irritated. Geoghegan Hart was in a great position and, arguably, in the form of his life.

And then came a crash. A combination of a corner on a fast descent, in the wet, with white lines on the road. While others, including Roglič and Thomas, got up and carried on, Geoghegan Hart stayed down. He was taken away in an ambulance and it was later confirmed he’d fractured his hip requiring an opeartion. Nine near-perfect days ruined by a split-second. It’s so often the case in professional cycling.

Pascal Ackermann edged out Jonathan Milan in the sprint. Brian described Milan’s sprinting style as looking like someone had put a cycling jersey on one of the bulls in Pamplona. Daniel topped that by saying Milan looked like a threshing machine being controlled by some sort of malevolent AI somewhere.

Thursday

Stage winner: Nico Denz
Maglia rosa: Geraint Thomas

My Vinovagando box of six wines paired with the Giro d’Italia route has arrived from D Vine Cellars, just in time for the weekend. A barbecue is planned. Arrosticini may be on the menu. Garlic sauce is optional.

Meanwhile, the sun was shining in southern England making my morning bike ride from Not Watford feel more Giro-like than the Giro.

I felt almost guilty telling Daniel about the glorious weather especially as there’s little sign of conditions improving in the coming days. Sitting at home on our sofas it is easy to overlook how gruelling it is racing in the wet and the cold day after day. Of course, no one wants to see the stages shortened and the big climbs bypassed but, as Larry Warbasse said, it can be easy for us observers – and the race officials with the hot air blowing through the vents in their cars – to take the riders for granted. His suggestion that the officials drive convertible cars with the tops down on the freezing cold descents, so they get a flavour of what it’s like, made a serious point in a lighthearted way.

The stage itself felt like the Giro was righting itself slowly, if temporarily. There was a big break, giving the day the feel of a traditional transitional stage, although transitioning to what remains to be seen with the weather set to play havoc with the mountain stages. And there were two important arrivals: Gianni Savio and the Italian Larry Warbasse Fan Club.