The last few days since the Giro d'Italia have been quite a whirlwind, but I’m happy to be sitting in my garden as I write this, my dog Blanco resting between my legs on the lawn furniture. I’ve been spending the last 48 hours or so trying to recover from my fatigued stupor.
When you’re in the midst of a three-week tour, you feel the fatigue. Your legs are heavy, there are permanent bags under your eyes, and each morning it gets a little harder to get out of bed. It’s not until you re-enter the normal world, however, that you realise how tired you really are. Then you have “normal” human beings to compare yourself to. Until you leave the Grand Tour bubble, you don’t realise the true extent of your fatigue.
Trying to keep pace while walking next to my girlfriend, I constantly get dropped. Just this time, there’s no gruppetto to catch me from behind. Navigating normal daily life, going to the grocery store, cooking breakfast, everything is slower.
I sat down on a chair yesterday… and then I woke up an hour later.
When you’re at the race, everything is scheduled to the minute, everything is go go go, you have no time to stop or think. You wake up, brush your teeth, pack your suitcase, go to breakfast, get on the bus, go to the race, sign in, race, get back on the bus, go to a massage, unpack your suitcase, go to dinner, go to bed. Rinse and repeat. It’s only when you exit the cycle that you realise how structured everything is for you, that you really don’t need to think about anything. You just follow the schedule, unpack and pack your suitcase, and pedal. It’s a simple life, luckily, as the racing is taxing.
Breakaways and bangs
This last week, the racing was especially taxing. It seemed that the Giro saved its greatest challenges for the final days, and I think they got what they were hoping for with some exciting racing. We saw pre-race favourites drop out of contention, with crashes and sickness, as well as other mishaps, we saw the race go one direction and then totally turn on its head.
The week started with a rainy day on Stage 16, which we would normally complain about, but seeing our absolute meteorological fortune this Giro, no one seemed too upset. Yes, racing in the rain sucks, but one or two days out of twenty-one, we can definitely manage. Anything was better than 2023, where it rained nearly every day for two weeks straight.
There was an extremely long fight for the breakaway, a common theme in this Giro, which I believe was made even longer by the conditions. You see, when it’s cold and rainy in a Grand Tour, most guys are scared to take off their rain jackets. You can’t risk getting too cold – if you freeze, that could be the end of your race. And for some reason, even in this day and age, we don’t yet have the technology to make aerodynamic rain jackets.
Sure, a couple of attempts exist, but most guys are racing with a glorified garbage bag on their backs, flapping in the wind. I mean, these things are literally sails. A friend of mine on another team did aero testing on their rain jackets this season and at race speeds, he lost 50 watts. FIFTY! So you can then imagine that if you essentially have a group of guys attacking with their brakes on, not many of them get very far. It’s quite the sight.
As we often saw in the rain this year, the roads were slick. Once the break finally went, we rode easy up a climb, before descending into a town. Even as we went through the corners gingerly, in one roundabout, I came through mid pack to see a number of riders on the ground to my right, one of which being Primož Roglič, who wouldn’t be able to restart the race.
It’s a shame that even while we are careful, sometimes these things are unavoidable. Half the peloton proceeded to stop for a nature break in the town, and as we hit the next climb, there was a feed zone. I was on our GC leader Michael Storer’s wheel as we entered it. I looked to my right to search for our soigneurs. I heard a loud “BANG” to my left, only to also hit something with my foot. It was a temporary traffic island, which somehow we hadn’t noticed, and Michael rode straight into it. He knocked the sign clean off its metal post, the blue arrow, rolling down the road in front of me.
I was lucky to stay upright, but pulled off the side of the road to wait for him with another teammate. And just as we started to ride back to the group, Ineos started to push hard at the front of the pack. It was carnage. Guys were getting dropped from the front, while others were trying to return from their pee stop off the back. There were people everywhere, and while Michael made it back on the climb, I only caught back on the descent.
As we were chasing back, going what I thought was rather quick for a wet descent, a rider passed me from behind going maybe 15kph quicker than me. He entered the next corner in front of me at an impressive speed. When he attempted to go through the turn at 65, his bike leaned, but his body just kept going straight. I never saw him again. A few turns later, I caught the cars, and as I proceeded to move up through them, I saw Egan Bernal lying in the middle of the road, rain jacket stuck in his rear wheel. All this in a period of maybe 20 km. It was a bloodbath.
The next day should have been easy, with a big breakaway going up the road and no big mountain in the last 50km of the stage, but as we often saw this Giro, the biggest gaps came on the days we least expected. While I believe the breakaway normally would have fought for the stage win, one of the other invited teams, Polti, missed out on the group up the road. In what appeared to be a punishment from their team director for having missed out, they had to pull with their entire team behind.
After burning a few guys in a rapid sequence, they proceeded to pull really hard for the entire first climb. Which then kept us close enough to the breakaway that other teams decided to ride hard on the second climb, which ended up exploding the whole race. It’s crazy to think how one small circumstance can shape an entire stage, or even change the outcome of the GC in the race!
Stage 18, I was fortunate enough to make it into the day’s breakaway with one of our sprinters, Rick Pluimers. It was our plan to have the two of us in the group before the day’s stage, so it’s always nice when you are able to make it happen. It’s also easier to “sneak” into when the group is more than 30 riders. After a stout tempo on the first climbs of the stage, we hit the flats before a technical finishing circuit. There were a few attacks, but nothing crazy, and on one of the accelerations, I just followed the wheel in front of me. Shortly after, in the radio, they shouted that there was a group off of the front. I looked in front of me to see if there was anyone there and couldn’t see the aforementioned group. I then realised that I happened to be in it.
Seeing as we had someone from each of the teams who had numbers in the group, no one chased behind. Even though no one pulled especially hard, our gap continued to grow… And it quickly became clear that the 11 of us would fight for the win. It’s a cool feeling when you are in a breakaway and you realise you’ll have a shot at playing for the victory, as it doesn’t happen all that often. You can try and try to get in it, and then once you finally get there, you never really know whether or not it will work out on the day - maybe the sprinters want to ride behind, or the GC teams on a mountain day. So it’s a relief when you finally get your shot.
I was certain that it would come down to the last 10km as everyone in the group was doing their turns, and we were rolling fluidly. Until Nico Denz hit us with 18km to go, and after a moment of hesitation, we never saw him again. I was a bit disappointed as my legs were strong and I felt good, and it’s not often the case that you have the legs to fight for the win on the day you have the opportunity to fight for it - too often you have the opportunity on a day you don’t have the legs, or the legs on the day you don’t have the chance! Either way, I was glad to get up there, even if I totally botched the attacks in the final AND the sprint. Guess I’ll have to wait for the next one.
The moments of the Giro
After my day in the break, we hit the real mountains. And with the majority of the group having an “easy” day out the day before, the pace was high. Personally, I didn’t have a whole lot to write home about, but all I can say is how impressed I was by Simon Yates on stage 20. Not exactly for what he did on that stage, but on how he rode the whole race. He was so calm. So chill. He just rode there, consistently, every day, not wasting his energy, while guys were sprinting for mountain tops, Red Bull Sprints, sprint sprints, hell, they even seemed to be sprinting for town signs on the side of the road of some of the random villages that we passed through.
For 20 days, non-stop sprinting, non-stop attacking. And then, on stage 20, on one climb, Simon attacked them. He saved his sprint for when it counted, and then didn’t stop. And he won the whole damn race because of it.
I find his ability to stay so calm and collected while everyone else felt the need to exert their dominance day in and day out impressive. And it paid off. I guess that’s Grand Tour racing.
We finished with an amazing lap of Rome. We got an audience with the Pope. That was perhaps the coolest. I think the entire peloton had goosebumps as he spoke, and then after, as we got to do a lap of the grounds of the Vatican. I’m pretty sure our Strava KOM will stand there for life.
Sometimes this sport provides you with experiences even money can’t buy. And I’m grateful for that. There are a lot of ups and too many downs, but I’m just glad to have had the chance to take part again. And I’m glad that - as one of my old directors used to say - us cyclists seem to have amnesia. Because I’ve already forgotten the suffering. I’ve forgotten all of the moments I was dying out there, just wishing I was home sitting in my garden with my dog between my legs, sun warming my skin, sipping on my coffee and hammering away at my keyboard rather than my pedals.
Guess I’ll just have to wait until next time.
