First Maglia Rosa 2011: Marco Pinotti!

Finally we have the name of the first Maglia Rosa of the 2011 Giro d'Italia. And that name is Marco Pinotti.

I had been waiting for today to arrive since the 30th of May 2010, when I found myself in a crowded Verona, waiting for Basso to arrive in l'Arena and for the Giro to end. There is always something special about the end of a Grand Tour: the bus drivers say 'bye' to each other, the riders walk hand in hand with wives and girlfriends or they rush to the airports as soon as they end the last stage. The mechanics get the last things back in order and give hats and water bottles to the supporters, whereas journalists and people from the staff walk around tired, happy and sad at the same time. 'Another Giro is over', they think. 'Now we can rest a while'.

Funnily enough, one of the last riders I saw in Verona on the 30th of May 2010 was Marco Pinotti. He rode a great Giro last year and, when I walked in front of the HTC bus after the end of the last stage of the race, he was inside it, sat comfortably in thefront seat. As soon as she noticed him, my mum (the least shy person in the family) screamed through the open door of the bus: 'Very well done, Pinotti!! Congratulations for your great Giro!!'. To our great surprise, not only did Pinotti hear her: he also smiled at us, laughed and thanked my mum, looking very happy. Almost as happy as today ;)

The start of a Grand Tour is always very frenetic: the journalists are nervous, the riders are nervous, the race organisers are nervous, and so are the ds and the mechanics. Then, in a few hours time, the first stage of the race is over and everyone calms down a bit.
The only ones who never seem to be worried are the supporters and today there were lots of people on the road between Venaria Reale and Torino. According to Zomegnan, they were about 1 million. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen so many people at the start of a cycling race. There wasn't a single meter of road without supporters and that was simply great.

Zomegnan had chosen to make the Giro start from Turin (actually, it started from the wonderful Venaria Reale) because of two reasons: a historical one and a 'mediatic' one. Torino in fact was the first capital of Italy and nowadays it is a very important economical center (who doesn't know about FIAT?). Moreover, it hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 2006 and it has a very famous Egyptian Museum (which I visited three times during my scholastic career). As far as the second reason is concerned, in these days in Torino there is the 'adunata degli Alpini': these militaries all meet in one Italian city every year and every time they attract a lot of attention. Last year the Alpini actually met in Bergamo (I wrote about them in my first post about Giro 2010) and there were about 500 000 people (!!) in the town center. I remember the town was closed to traffic for 2 days and that we all had a lot of fun: children listened to the Alpini songs, older people drank wine and talked with the older men, women were courted by everyone in a shameless way. Moreover, it was great to see the Alpini camping in schools and in gardens all over the town (and it was even greater to get a lift from an Alpino driving an old tractor). As you can understand from what I wrote, Zomegnan chose to make the Giro start in Turin on the same day as the Adunata degli Alpini in order to get as much attention as possible.

Anyway. After talking about these things, let's finally say a few things about today's stage.
First of all, it was won by HTC Columbia. Just 5 athletes of this team managed to stay together until the end of the TT, but their result was really good anyway. These 5 riders were Marco Pinotti (Italian TT champion), Mark Cavendish, the young Craig Lewis, Lars Bak and Kanstantin Siutsou.
Pinotti was extremely nervous before the start of the stage and we could see that when he was interviewed by Italian tv. Marco almost seemed unable to talk: the journalist would ask him long questions, he would answer in a very short way. And to say that he's usually very calm!
Many people were actually a bit worried about HTC tactics, since they feared that Mark Cavendish would have crossed the finish-line in first. It already happened back in 2009 (when Cav wore the pink jersey after HTC's victory in the first stage) and Pinotti was really sad on that day. Luckily, this time Cavendish let Marco the honour of taking the pink jersey, which the engineer had already worn for some days in 2007.
The second team in the final stage classification was Radioshack. The Shack has a very good team (attention to Machado!!). Poor Ivan Rovny had a problem in a curve and is now 205th in the GC.
Third tea, was Liquigas - this means that Nibali was the best GC man. Actually, he also seemed the best one at handling pressure: as I already said, shortly before the start Pinotti was really nervous, while Contador didn't answer a journalist's questions. Vincenzo, on the other hand, looked pretty relaxed.
4th team (with the same time as Liquigas) was a surprising Omega Pharma Lotto. Veikkanen was the virtual pink jersey for a lot of time and now he's the leader of the 'Azzurri d'Italia' classification.
Garmin and Lampre did 2" worse than Liquigas and Omega. I was a bit disappointed by Garmin, but I was very happy to see Scarponi's team doing well in a TTT. Michele lost a lot of time (and the Giro podium) in last year TTT in Cuneo, so it's great for his morale to ride so well against the clock.
7th was Rabobank (good result), whereas 8th was Saxo Bank. According to the journalist who followed SB from the motorbike, Riis' team had to face a strong wind during some parts of the race. However, although an 8th placement doesn't actually look that brilliant, we must consider that Contador lost just 4" from Nibali. Therefore I think that, all in all, SB raced well.
Sky was slightly disappointing (it rode 17" slower than HTC and had the same time as Vacansoleil), while Androni went better than expected.
Leopard Trek was 14th in the stage classification (poor Klemme couldn't keep his teammates's pace), whereas Astana, Geox and Euskaltel didn't go well at all.
Geox and Euskaltel aren't teams designed for TTT, so they had to defend themselves in the race. Moreover, they had to race without the other teams' time references and this was probably very difficult. But still, I was pretty disappointed by Euskaltel: starting a Giro with 51" of delay from Nibali isn't that nice for Anton!
As far as Menchov is concerned, he's always had problems in TTT. But still, he managed to lose 'just' 31" from Liquigas and this can be considered an acceptable result.
Talking about Astana, that was the true disappointment of the first day: Kreuziger and Kiserlovski are good time trialists, but their team lost 28" from Liquigas anyway.
However, we must consider that TTT are team performances and that they hardly decide the eventual outcome of a Grand Tour, especially if they're included in the parcours just in order to create a spectacular start for the race (like this year).

So, this was the first day of Giro: Engineer Pinotti is the happiest man on Earth right now, HTC Columbia is the happiest team and supporters cannot wait for tomorrow stage to begin.
Talking about it, it is likely to end in a bunch sprint. I don't know if I'll write a post about it - perhaps I'll just write a few things in the comment area.
That's all from me for the moment - good night everyone and hope you enjoyed the first day of Giro as much as I did! As people say, 'the best has yet to come', so stay tuned in the next days!!

(Pic by Bettini)