Tuscany awaits

The Girovagando 2024 reaches Lucca today. It's the Brian Nygaard stage

by Lionel Birnie

The Giro d’Italia is in full swing and Daniel’s Girovagando journey is taking all sorts of detours, as you would expect. So far we’ve heard about The Godfather, risotto, and a Marco Pantani look-alike complete with goatee beard.

The Cycling Podcar – a rental Ford Puma nicknamed Darwin Ata-Puma – was a DNF on stage three. Seriously underpowered on the climbs – rather unlike its namesake, to be fair – Darwin refused to start in Novara and has had its contract cancelled. Its next event will likely be no more strenuous than carrying tourists on holiday. It takes a special kind of engine to get through a grand tour.

It brought to mind several vehicle-related incidents at the Giro over the years, which raise a smile now even if they weren’t all funny at the time. There were the glory days when we were lent a beautiful white Maserati, the epitome of Italian style and design, that drew admiring glances wherever we went. Richard Moore reversed it into two separate flowerpots in two different car parks in the space of about 12 hours, which I found amusing once I’d checked there was no damage done to the car. Then, in the narrow backstreets of a town somewhere in the boot of Italy he executed an extraordinary 25-point turn that drew a round of applause from the significant crowd that had gathered to watch. I remember getting out of the car to offer (useless) advice and an elderly Italian gentleman, clocking the British plates, raised his eyebrows and said to his friend ‘Ahhhh, Inglese,’ as if that in itself explained the terrible driving. Richard, who was on the verge of a bit of a sense-of-humour failure, heard and lent out of the window to say: ‘Scottish, actually.’

Just before the Giro, I reminded Daniel of the time one of the tyres on our rental car kept going soft in Sicily, meaning a detour back to the airport to get a replacement and a race against time to get to the top of Mount Etna before the riders. ‘Ah, don’t worry, nothing like that will happen this year,’ I said.

Yesterday, Daniel and Brian found the Hotel Excelsior, where Eddy Merckx was effectively kicked out of the 1969 Giro, denying him what would have been his second grand tour victory. It made me think that Daniel should leave pink plaques – similar to the blue ones in London that point out sites of historical significance and cultural heritage – dotted all over Italy to mark these places. I can think of Riccardo Riccò’s ice cream parlour, Michele Ferrari’s house outside Ferrara, and the Excelsior hotel, which would all be recipients of a pink plaque, and there’s many more we’ve visited over the years.

Yesterday’s stage was like a mini Milan-Sanremo and, having ridden that coast road from Spotorno over the Capo Mele and on to the Poggio with Simon last spring it was nice to see them flying through Ceriale, Albenga, Alassio, Laigueglia and the other towns that were so familiar.

There’s lots to listen to in this edition of The 11.01 Cappuccino, so let’s crack on…

La chiacchierata del giorno with Scott Drawer

A few days ago, Daniel spoke to Scott Drawer, the performance director at Ineos Grenadiers, who is part of the new-look management group along with CEO John Allert. We heard a bit from him in the stage two episode but here’s the full conversation. You can also listen to Daniel’s conversation with Allert on the Friends of the Podcast feed in Diary of a CEO.

From the KM0 Vault: La Rosea / The Pinky

Today’s delve into the KM0 vault goes back a couple of years to an episode Daniel and I made about La Gazzetta dello Sport, the newspaper which gives the pink jersey its identity. When we were growing up, Daniel and I both had a fascination with cycling, football and foreign media, and in the early 1990s Channel 4 began broadcasting Serie A matches. The show’s host, James Richardson, gave viewers a glimpse into Italian sporting culture and the country at large with segments that seemed almost impossibly glamorous when viewed from the English suburbs. He’d sit in some busy Italian square with an espresso cup and a copy of Gazzetta, talking us through the week’s big stories, adding an Italian-accented flourish to the names of the players and teams. Sometimes it’s hard to see where Daniel gets his inspiration…

Listen to La Rosea / The Pinky

The Girovagando case from DVine Cellars

The 2024 Girovagando case, curated by our friends at DVine Cellars, is available to buy now. The second wine in the case of six, the Cosimo Maria Massini, pairs with tomorrow’s sixth stage through the Tuscan hills.

Online now: La Vuelta Femenina

The Cycling Podcast Féminin team of Rose Manley and Denny Gray returned to review La Vuelta Fémenina where the pressure was mounting on Demi Vollering with the SD Worx star still searching for her first win of the season after a string of second and third place finishes in the Classics. Could the reigning Tour de France Femmes champion add the Spanish stage race to her palmarès?

Enter the Slipstream – UK theatrical premiere next week

Don’t forget tickets are available for three screenings of Enter the Slipstream, made behind-the-scenes with the EF Pro Cycling team during the 2020 ‘lockdown’ Tour de France, next week.

If you want to see the film, you can buy tickets for all three screenings below.

London – Via Atelier on Thursday, May 16 at 6pm
18-19 Stable Street, London
Tickets

Alderley Edge – Velo Edge on Saturday, May 18 at 5.30pm
48a London Road, Alderley Edge
Tickets

Glasgow – Drygate Brewery on Sunday, May 19 at 5.30pm
85 Drygate, Glasgow
Tickets

Stage five of our Girovagando coverage will be on air tonight. Join Daniel and Brian in Italy as they reach Lucca, not far from Brian’s adopted home. It amused me that Daniel got Max Sciandri, a Tuscan through-and-through, to talk through what was on the agenda for today’s fifth stage and it reminded me of an episode of Our Giro, made during lockdown, which featured Max, aka The Supertuscan, which you can listen to here for a deeper dive into what life in the region is like.

The 11.01 Cappuccino will be back on Friday with Richard Abraham’s thoughts on the Giro so far.