Herning-Herning stage of the Giro. The three breakawayers du jour and Lars Bak have been caught. 8 kms to go. The peloton speeds up. All of a sudden, a rider at the back of the group crashes and has a mechanical. The RAI camera zooms on the unlucky rider, my father and I identify him (ok, it wasn't difficult): it's Taylor Phinney, winner of yesterday stage, leader of the GC. The young American champion looks calm even if his team mechanic seems unable to solve the problem with his bike. After about 30 seconds he hops back on his bike and starts his peloton chase, looking as calm as ever.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said about my father and I: as soon as we recognise Taylor, we start screaming like mad. 'Go Taylor, go boy, you can do it!!', I scream. 'Naah, he had ill luck! He could have crashed at any point of the stage, but he crashed now. So unlucky! And why don't they stop his teammates?', dad goes. Mum enters the living room after hearing my screams and starts supporting Phinney too. Less than 3 kms later, the BMC rider is back and safe in the peloton. He looks calm and relaxed, my parents and I look as if we had just ended a 40 kms TT. How embarassing.
Scene du jour number 2:Last curve of the Herning-Herning stage. Sky is in the lead, Guardini, Ferrari and the other Italian sprinters are behind the English team. Suddenly, a bike flies, a man crashes: Theo Bos hurts Renshaw (or was it Graeme Brown's?)'s rear wheel and falls off his bike, forcing poor Kristoff to fly against the barriers. Guardini crashes behind them too.
Still, my mind is focused on the final sprint: a wild BMC rider (Hushovd) appears, dad goes 'Hushovd!', sister goes 'Cavendish!', I go 'Demare!!!' as soon as I see a rider with a white jersey at the front of the race. I scream that name once, twice, thrice, until Cavendish doesn't cross the finish-line in triumph. Grandmother, who had just come upstairs to ask my mother for some sugar, watches me in astonishment. I try to understand if Demare ended up in the top 3, and I discover that the rider in white who placed in 3rd was Soupe, and not Demare. So, so embarassing.
So, dear readers, these are just two extracts from the second stage of the Giro seen from my personal point of view. As you can imagine, it was a very thrilling stage, especially in its finale. However, let's go in order and let's talk a bit about yesterday's stage too. The Giro in fact took off yesterday with an exciting prologue in Herning. The TT was very technical in its first part, whereas the second sector of the route perfectly suited powerful time trialists.
The first rider to leave the ramp was Jackson Rodriguez, the first GT contender was Roman Kreuziger, who scored a good time. As the time and the riders rode by, we had two entertaining scenes. First, a Diquigiovanni rider launched a Giro d'Italia spot by saying: 'Follow the Giro every day. It is the most exciting cycling race in the most beautiful country of the world'. A very nice advertisement, that's for sure, but which left me (and many others) with a question: which is the most beautiful country of the world, Denmark or Italy? The mistery is still unsolved.
Second epic moment du jour, Cunego's interview right before his time trial. A RAI journalist asked a pretty shocked Damiano: 'You're a very good time trialist, do you think you can score a good result here?' Of course poor Cunego immediately felt the urge to make things clear: 'Oh my God, I'm not a good time trialist!' A few seconds later, to make things even more clearer, the Lampre rider adds: 'There is no dualism between Scarponi and me. You journalists are creating this fight, which doesn't exist at all, just like you did with Simoni and me back in 2004'. Amazing, isn't it? The Giro hasn't started yet, and Cunego has already had harsh words for the journalists. You've gotta love working with cyclists! Btw, in spite of this pre-start tragicomic interview, Cunego managed to score a decent time.
At about 6 pm, one thing became sure: Ramunas Navardauskas, Garmin rider who scored the best time of the race about 2 hours earlier, scored a very good result. We had the direct proof of it when Lancaster and Pinotti, who both went full gas, couldn't do better than the Garmin athlete.
At 6.30, however, the other favourites du jour reached the starting ramp and life for Navardauskas' time became harder.
Saxo Bank's Manuele Boaro, at his first GT, scored a great time and managed to break the spell that seemed to have been cast on Navardauskas' result. Unfortunately, the joy of Saxo Bank supporters didn't last long: a great Geraint Thomas, in fact, overtook the Italian shortly after.
At about 7 pm, one of the last riders began his race against time: Taylor Phinney, whose father won a Tour de France stage back in the 1980s and whose mother won the cycling road race at the 1984 Olympics. On the previous day a journalist had told Taylor: 'Your father won a stage at TdF, your mother was Olympic champion. Your family just lacks a victory at the Giro'. In spite of this and in spite of the pressure of being the favourite of the day, Taylor rode a very good time trial, never looked anxious and managed to score the best time of the day.
In the meanwhile, Frank Schleck scored a, ehm, decent time, just like Basso. However, since 'criticising the TT abilities of los Schlecks' is a national hobby here in Italy (a hobby I quite like too, actually), chronists started criticising the Luxembourgian rider. Luckily they were distracted by the fact that Larsson, Kwiatowski and Barta couldn't beat Phinney's time and, later, they were shocked by Scarponi's time, the worst one amongst the GC contenders. Actually, the chronists were so shocked that they stopped complaining about Frank Schleck's poor time trial abilities in order to start discussing Scarponi's form ahead of the Giro. At the same time, however, they also started praising the little Wonderkid of the day, Taylor Phinney, who yesterday got the pink, the white and the red jerseys of the race. Chapeau Taylor!
This morning the stage started at about 12.30 am. Three brave riders (Kaisen, Rubiano and Balloni) went on a breakaway as journalists and the rest of the cycling family were busy wishing 'happy birthday' to Roman Kreuziger and Francisco Ventoso.
The three breakawayers were caught with 39 kms to go, after a huge work by Ian Stannard. At that point, Danish rider Lars Bak escaped from the peloton and launched himself in a solo action which ended with about 17 kms to go. Nine kilometers later, the fact that I mentioned above took place: Phinney crashed, had a mechanical and lost some time. In spite of this, the boy looked very calm and relaxed, as if his pink jersey wasn't in danger. 'When you know you're strong, you don't show your nervousness', Italian chronist Davide Cassani said. After the finish-line, Taylor said that, although he looked very calm, 'I was actually very nervous inside and I was afraid I was going to lose the pink jersey'. Luckily, thanks to the help of his teammates (Tschopp, Ballan and D. Wyss: Phinney thanked them on tv as soon as he crossed the finish-line), the young American could keep the pink jersey. All's well that ends well, isn't it?
A few kms later, however, another drama moment took place. Today's stage had a hard right curve in the last 500 meters and that's where Theo Bos crashed together with poor Kristoff and Guardini. None of them was injured, but it was surely very frightening to see them crashing at such a high speed.
In spite of the crash, the other sprinters obviously kept on racing. Rabobank riders (Brown and Renshaw) tried to do their best after losing their captain, whereas Hushovd and Demare seemed unable to keep the pace of the fastest riders. Cavendish started his sprint with about 200 meters to go and he outsprinted Goss and the surprising Soupe. 4th was Farrar, 5th was Ferrari.
After the stage Cavendish dedicated the victory to his daughter Delilah and made one thing clear: 'I didn't tell journalists that I'm going to win 6 stages in this Giro, I simply told them that I want to win as many stages as possible!', he said, 'Cunego style'. Mark received the red jersey of the race, whereas Phinney kept the pink and the white ones. As he walked on the podium, his very proud mother looked simply delighted on the 'Processo alla tappa' stage and that was a very cute thing to see.
So, at the end of the first two Giro stages the balance is the following: a super happy Phinney wears the pink and the white jerseys and has won a stage, just like Cavendish. As for the GC contenders, so far Kreuziger is the best amongst them.
Tomorrow there's another flat stage, the third one of this Giro. I think none of you, dear readers, needs me to remind you what happened in the third stage of last year Giro, on that cursed descent called 'Passo del Bocco'. Hopefully, tomorrow's stage will be as beautiful as the 3rd stage of the 2010 Giro d'Italia: a long, exciting stage abroad, between the wind and sea of the Netherlands; a difficult finale, with a hard left curve; and a wonderful, handsome winner with a contagious laugh and a great enthusiasm. That amazing rider was Wouter Weylandt, the n. 108 of this Giro. Yes, because, although we can't see him, the Belgian boy with the lovely smile is still part of the Corsa Rosa, and will always be part of this competition and of the cycling family. A year has come and gone, but the cycling family hasn't forgotten you: WW Special, we miss you.
