The Giro d'Italia so far...

Our recap of five days on the road with Daniel and Brian

by Lionel Birnie

If you count Our Giro, the three-week virtual journey we created during the 2020 lockdown, this Giro d’Italia is the 25th grand tour we’ve covered with daily episodes for The Cycling Podcast.

Five stages down, almost a quarter of the race done already, what have we learned so far?

Saturday

Stage winner: Remco Evenepoel
Maglia rosa: Remco Evenepoel

Britain was gripped by Coronation fever as King Charles the third took the throne. I couldn’t help but see parallels with the Giro everywhere. As Charles and Camilla listened to the service, waiting to be presented with their crowns, they sat in luxurious pink seats – clearly inspired by the Giro itself. They looked like time triallists who’d set the best times and were watching nervously to see if they would stand up to the challenge of the later riders.

The Giro connections didn’t end there. I looked at the startlist and saw there was one Charles in the race too – Charlie Quarterman of Team Corratec. As a junior, Quarterman rode for Team Zappi, the UK-based development squad run by the charismatic Italian Flavio Zappi, who finished second in the 1984 Giro’s king of the mountains competition.

All the talk was of whether it was too early to crown King Remco after just 21 minutes of racing. Of course it is. This is the Giro. Anything can happen in the next three weeks.

Our coverage itself was graced by the closest thing The Cycling Podcast has to royalty. Il Barone. Baron Brian Nygaard, who puts the culture in viticulture.

I had to hit the rewind button when I heard him and fellow wine connoisseur Daniel toast the opening episode of our 2023 Giro coverage with a glass of pecorino. ‘They’re drinking cheese,’ I yelled out as the froth deflated on my lunchtime cappuccino.

Anyway, the first episode was notable for the revelation that Thomas Gloag, Jumbo-Visma’s replacement for one of the other replacements, had got to the team hotel at 3.30 in the morning before the time trial. There was discussion of the aerodynamic qualities of Remco Evenepoel’s smooth face and the remarkably upbeat Primoz Roglič, especially considering he’d been soundly beaten in the opening 19.6 kilometres. Even Daniel’s Rog impression was upbeat.

Brian added the crucial context in the Tale of the Tappa that the two pre-race favourites had been separated by a single second between the final time check and the finish line – the uphill portion of the course. All the damage had been done on the flat, which might be good news if you overlook the billiard table time trial to Cesena on Sunday. And Brian’s point – that all time trial results are relative – was a good one too. If Roglič had been told in the morning he’d finish level on time with Stefan Küng he’d probably have taken that.

Daniel and Brian took a short detour to meet Rocky Marciano, one of the greatest heavyweight boxers the world has ever seen, or his statue at least. Marciano’s father hailed from Ripa Teatina before emigrating to the United States. Posing in front of Marciano, Daniel took up an orthodox stance. Well, there’s a first time for everything.

Sunday

Stage winner: Jonathan Milan
Maglia rosa: Remco Evenepoel

News broke overnight that Daniel’s phone had got wet and was not charging properly. It was adding to the challenge of the opening weekend.

It got me thinking about the five things that can go wrong at a grand tour – the thought of which bring me out in a cold sweat.

In fifth place is missing dinner, and I do not say that lightly. Going to bed hungry, having been unable to unwind, debrief and think about something other than the race, is such a blow to morale it can take half a day to recover.

In fourth place is losing a laptop charger or similar crucial piece of equipment, as I did at the first Giro we covered in 2016. It made for a very tense day-and-a-half as I nursed my laptop through on energy-saving mode and borrowed a colleague’s cable in the press room to give myself a boost until we could visit an Apple Store at an out-of-town shopping centre near Venice, where I parted with what felt like the equivalent of a month’s mortgage payment to buy a replacement charger.

In third place, losing the recording of an interview. The memory of this happening at the 2017 Giro still causes my face to go hot. I spent 20 minutes talking to Tom Dumoulin – the eventual race winner – about his Italian holidays, his favourite wines and his love of the country, which would have made a brilliant episode of Kilometre 0. For context, 20 minutes is a huge amount of time to spend talking to a rider before a stage and it happens rarely – especially with one of the race favourites. I got back to the car, checked the recorder and realised that I’d had headphones plugged into the microphone jack and the whole thing had failed to record. This design flaw on that particular piece of equipment led me to retire it there and then. Daniel will tell you it took me a while to get over that but, by about 2019, I’d more or less forgotten it.

In second place is turning up at our hotel and finding I’ve booked it for the wrong night. I go through the hotel bookings repeatedly to check the details are right and yet every time we arrive somewhere there’s a nagging doubt I’ve got it wrong. We’ve not had to sleep in the car – yet – but even saying that feels like tempting fate.

And in first place, a lost or malfunctioning phone. Without a phone, it’s almost impossible to work. We use it as a sat-nav, wifi-on-the-go, research tool and, well, also occasionally as a phone.

I nearly suggested to Daniel that he should put his phone in a bowl of dry arborio rice – and it must be arborio rice – to extract the moisture from the port, but thought better of it and, fortunately, the problem eventually sorted itself out.

Anyway, Sunday’s episode heralded the first appearance of Ciro Scognamiglio. Truly, the Giro had begun.

Kilometre 0: Our Giro series is available to Friends of the Podcast

Monday

Stage winner: Michael Matthews
Maglia rosa: Remco Evenepoel

As ever, Stacy Snyder’s Giro d’Italia mugs, cups and gelato bowls had sold out in a matter of minutes on Saturday. This year’s design tells the story of the entire race itself, featuring the distinctive Abruzzese fishing huts, the trabocchi, representing the grande partenza, and the colosseum in Rome to mark the finish.

For the past four summers, the sale of Stacy’s cups for The Cycling Podcast has raised money for good causes. One of the first recipients of the money – from the 2019 Tour de France batch of cups, to be precise – was the West Lothian Cycle Circuit in Linthligow, not far from Edinburgh. Back then the one-kilometre circuit was still just a drawing on a piece of paper. Driven by Matt Ball and a dedicated team of volunteers, the circuit was close to becoming a reality by the time Simon Gill and I visited during our Tour d’Écosse ride just over a year ago.

Now the circuit is finished, complete with a cobbled section – very much the cherry on the cake as far as Matt was concerned – and they are having an official opening day on May 27. We’ll soon have news of plans for a permanent memorial to Richard Moore at the circuit.

Monday’s stage was perfect for a game of ‘pass the egg’ in the peloton. We watched as Astana’s Simone Velasco popped an egg – presumably hard-boiled – in race leader Remco Evenepoel’s back pocket and wondered what it was all about. It was, perhaps, just something to keep the riders entertained during a second consecutive long, sloooow stage.

It brought back to mind tales of Mario Cipollini stopping for a pizza during a Giro stage or Matt White diving into a shop to buy ice creams for his teammates. But the weather was lousy too, so it all felt rather un-Giro-like.

Last year, Geraint Thomas forgot to take his gilet off for the opening time trial at the Tour de France in Copenhagen and that sparked a challenge to get one of his gilets all the way round the race route to Paris. Perhaps the Giro could invent a ‘pass the egg’ classification using a raw egg. The leaders jersey would be white with a giant yellow circle, representing the yolk, on the front. The object would be to safely get the egg to Rome where it would then be cracked into an authentic pasta carbonara*. The only rule is that the egg must start each stage in the possession of one rider and finish with someone else.

* Speaking of carbonara, everything I knew about Italian food is wrong. Make sure you listen to his episode Imbroglio! The Big Italian Food Lie to be truly shocked and enlightened.

Mauro Vegni wasn’t too happy to be asked about a second underwhelming stage in a row by RAI television – the host broadcasters. The question was whether the stages should be shorter in order to make them more interesting. ‘What is this? Junior cycling?’ he scoffed.

The final phase of the race, over some very tricky climbs, was worth the wait. I was watching from behind the sofa as Sepp Kuss risked his fingers fiddling about with the battery in his rear mech on a greasy descent.

And, away from the Giro, Rose Manley and Lizzy Banks released an episode of Arrivée explaining the controversy and confusion at the Vuelta Femenina. It’s another must-listen.

Tuesday

Stage winner: Aurélien Paret-Peintre
Maglia rosa: Andreas Leknessund

Daniel took Brian on one of his magical mystery tours, skipping the start to head to the middle of nowhere, or more specifically into the hills near Atella. They were chasing Cancellara.

Just as they were on the trail of the Swiss Classics star with the Italian name, Brian’s phone rang and it was Cancellara himself explaining that his grandparents hailed from Basilicata and that he still had family in the region.

As Daniel pointed out, for a rider who starred in the Classics and the other two grand tours – and especially as a Swiss with Italian heritage – Fabian Cancellara left relatively little impression on the Giro. He started three times and never made it further than stage 11.

Anyway, to the stage, and the slow pace of much of the previous two days was forgotten as the race erupted over the final climbs. Mauro Vegni was probably not the only one who was relieved to see some hell-for-leather action. Tao Geoghegan Hart of Ineos Grenadiers told Daniel that he welcomed the blow-out after two low-intensity stages.

Wednesday

Stage winner: Kayden Groves
Maglia rosa: Andreas Leknessund

The Giro d’Italia’s maglia nera is only a symbolic prize these days. It refers to the last rider on general classification. With the rain falling in Campania, the peloton was full of black jerseys as the riders put on their waterproofs. Even Remco Evenepoel was in black, although his jersey at least had the rainbow bands around the middle.

Evenepoel crashed twice, the first time when a dog ran into the road – a particular hazard in southern Italy. Many a morning run while covering the Giro has been interrupted by a stray dog barking or chasing or just standing in the road daring me to pass. Brian speculated that the dog was a corgi, which continues our royal theme because the late Queen Elizabeth kept many of them over the years.

Daniel and Brian were enjoying a glass of Falanghina as they recorded the episode and there’s a particularly fine example in the Girovagando case curated by our friends at D Vine Cellars. You can try it for yourself if you’d like to buy a case.

Finally this week, a word for our brilliant production and editing team, who keep our regular episodes coming throughout the year and then step up the pace during grand tour season. They roll through and off on editing duties as efficiently and gracefully as a stage-winning team time trial outfit. So a big thank you from me, Daniel and Brian – and from all of our listeners, I’m sure – to Jon Moonie, Tom Whalley, Will Jones, Adam Bowie and Huw Owen.

Very lastly, our Kilometre 0 series during this year’s Giro d’Italia and Tour de France will be for Friends of the Podcast subscribers. Thank you to everyone who has chosen to support us financially. It ensures our regular coverage remains free-to-all. An annual subscription costs £20, although there is an option to pay more if you wish, and gives access to the full archive of more than 100 episodes plus the full Kilometre 0 back catalogue.