Featured image courtesy of Bettiniphoto/Road Bike Action
Week one of the Giro d’Italia is done, the race now moves northwards on its way to the Dolomites. The race leadership has changed three times and right now, one Colombian is looking extremely good to win his second Grand Tour. Only one week down, two to go, the 104th Giro d’Italia is far from over.
Bernal dominating the field
Stage 9 at Campo Felice was the first high summit finish of the race but with the added twist of a gravel section. To see Egan Bernal attacking and leaving everyone else behind was a clear statement to everyone else, not producing significant time gaps but on the hardest stage so far Bernal was the best of the rest. INEOS Grenadiers are dominating the pace on the climbs, the INEOS train (Team Sky previously) is showing its usual force, one week down they look unstoppable.
But as it so happens while INEOS are looking strong with Bernal, this is a new scenario for the team. In their previous Giro overall victories with Chris Froome in 2018 and Tao Geoghegan Hart last year, the pink jersey has come late in the third week – now they find themselves with the maglia rosa after just week one. It would be an incredible achievement if Egan Bernal can sustain the current form he is on and dominate this Giro all the way to Milan.
INEOS surely cannot dominate the field like they have done at the Tour over the years. It must also be said that Bernal is without a key mountain domestique in Pavel Sivakov and although he stormed to victory at Campo Felice, he doesn’t actually have a huge margin over second placed Remco Evenepoel. Bernal (below) is definately going to need more than 14 seconds over Evenepoel if he remains in pink before the Stage 21 Milan time trial – the Belgian is a far superior TT specialist over the Colombian.
A mention must go to the man Egan Bernal has succeeded in taking pink from – Attila Valter. A fantastic stint in the maglia rosa will have done wonders fro Groupama-FDJ and for Valter’s home country Hungary. The first Hungarian to lead a Grand Tour, it should have certainly put Valter’s name in the spotlight for cycling fans in his native country, Hungary itself was actually meant to host the Giro’s Grande Partenza last year until COVID stopped it all.
A terrific effort by Attila Valter in pink and who knows, a top ten in the GC and a stage win would do nicely.
The showman delivers once again
Stage 10 at last year’s race saw a glorious solo victory for Peter Sagan. So it was quite iconic that the three times former world champion won Stage 10 this year too. From L’Aquila to Foligno it was not an entirely flat day with two category four climbs and in Bora-Hansgrohe they did everything to put some sprinters in the hurt locker. Dylan Groenewegen and Tim Merlier were both distanced as was Giacomo Nizzolo – three threats for the stage win all out of the frame.
For Sagan, he owes his team for the hard work they put in and hats off to his team mate Maciej Bodnar who put in a huge effort in the finale. It was actually second time lucky for Bora after they tried on Stage 3 to distance lots of sprinters but eventually found Taco van der Hoorn to far ahead to catch.
Handling the pressure is what Peter Sagan does best, the Slovakian now finds himself in the maglia ciclamino points jersey. He leads both Fernando Gaviria and Davide Cimolai by 17 points, with all three riders looking set to complete the entire three weeks. How the points competition finishes will be fascinating with only two flat stages remaining, although the hilly stages will suit Sagan better than his pure sprinting rivals.
Caleb Ewan delivers his Giro objective, so why the fuss?
Stages 5 and 7 were won by Caleb Ewan, the Australian taking both in a dominant fashion. His aim for 2021 is to win stages at all three Grand Tours in a single season, something only achieved by three riders. Part one of his quest is done – two stage wins at the Giro, nobody got close to him in Cattolica and Termoli.
What you have to admire about Ewan is his versatility and also an ability to actually climb well too, Stage 7 did feature a 12% drag before the line, so hanging on to contest the win is definately a skill in his locker. Flat stages providing fast finishes are what every sprinter craves but for Caleb Ewan varied terrain can also be an added plus.
So you can imagine the shock when he had to abandon the race just one day after taking Stage 7. A crash inside a tunnel was reportedly not the reason why Ewan abandoned but knee pain at the start of the stage was his reason for doing so.
Ewan leaving the Giro was not enough for former 11 times Grand Tour champion Eddy Merckx. Writing in Het Nieuwsblad, “That Caleb Ewan also bothers me enormously. I find his statement a total lack of professionalism and lack of respect for the Giro and the sport of cycling. He deserves a sanction: take away all the bonuses. Former Tour boss Félix Lévitan would have said: ‘you won’t be at this race next year’.”
The comments by Merckx have understandably led to a conversation that even Merckx’s son Axel (current team director at continental team Hagens Berman Axeon) felt he had to get involved with to saying, “Rules are rules – you can’t take away bonuses. But to just leave, without any real proof of knee pain, that’s a total lack of respect towards the organisation.”
Remarks made by both Eddy and Axel Merckx have been criticised and rightly so. If a rider suffers from knee pain, are we seriously suggesting that Caleb Ewan is a liar? He has achieved his aim to win two stage wins, so just let him prepare for the Tour, a race which Ewan is almost certainly likely to win more Grand Tour stages and complete all the way to Paris.
To accuse Caleb Ewan of abandoning the Giro as a “total lack of professionalism” is a bit rich from the man who got thrown out of the Giro in 1969 for testing positive for the banned substance fencamfamine, plus a further three positive doping tests. For the great man Eddy Merckx is and always will be to cycling, this opinion on Caleb Ewan was very harsh on a rider who has done nothing wrong.
Sprinters leaving the Giro before the race concludes is nothing new so what has changed? Mark Cavendish did exactly the same in 2009 and 2011 before heading to the Tour de France. Merckx’s comments really miss the point and really did kick up a fuss about absolutely nothing.
Other GC contenders keeping their powder dry
Stage 9’s gravel finish saw Trek-Segafredo’s Giulio Ciccone finish second on the stage behind Bernal, arguably the man who has been the most surprising at this Giro. The former stage winner and King of the Mountains winner from 2019, it wasn’t too much of a shock to see Ciccone up their contesting the victory. At the 2019 Tour in a break alongside Dylan Teuns, the extended summit finish atop La Planche des Belles Filles did feature a gravel section, a terrain where Ciccone seems to thrive upon.
All of a sudden with Vincenzo Nibali falling back on the GC, Ciccone looks to be the man challenging for a good placing for Trek-Segafredo. After Monte Zoncolan on Stage 14, we’ll know what sort of shape the Italian is in.
Astana’s Aleksandr Vlasov has so far made a few digs, the Russian more than making up from his unfortunate abandon at the Giro last year, and in Bahrain-Victorious, after losing their leader Mikel Landa to a crash on Stage 5, Italian climber Damiano Caruso is still seventh overall.
The powder is being kept dry by British pair Hugh Carthy and Simon Yates, both sixth and ninth in the GC respectively. Both riders haven’t quite lit up the fire just yet and are maybe just waiting for one opportunity to strike for home. Ireland’s Dan Martin for Israel Start-Up Nation has also looked good in week one as well as UAE-Team Emirates climber Davide Formolo. For Formolo he has not won a stage at the Giro since 2015, so surely after six long years, the time for the Italian is now.
Cofidis finally break their duck
Stage 8 to Guardia Sanframondi was always likely to produce a breakaway that would go all the way to the finish. The Bocca della Selva provided the biggest climb of the day, once crested a 40 km descent flew the riders towards the uphill finale. A breakaway making it to the finish was always going to include the smaller pro-continental teams and smaller World Tour teams who don’t have the biggest budgets, desperate for a stage victory.
For French team Cofidis, their plans for Elia Viviani to break their 11 year drought of a Giro stage win hasn’t gone to plan. So instead why not allow a young Frenchman to breakaway and secure the glory? Well that’s exactly what they did with 25-year-old Victor Lafay, who attacked from the break in the closing kilometres, passing Bardiani’s Giovanni Carboni and eventually winning Stage 8 by a margin of 30 seconds over EOLO-Kometa’s Francesco Gavazzi.
A first professional win for Victor Lafay makes it all the more sweeter. Cycling fans will know already that the Frenchman performed well at the Tour of Valencia back in February, finishing fourth overall and even coming close to a mountain stage win atop the Alto de la Reina. At U23 level he has excelled coming second in the 2018 U23 European Championships road race, but now on the biggest stage Lafay (below) delivers a brilliant outcome for Cofidis.
You also have to feel for Carboni too. The Italian did attack on the lower reaches of the final climb but couldn’t keep the pace going. Bardiani are another team who are going through a Giro drought. No stage wins at their ‘home’ Grand Tour since Giulio Ciccone back in 2016. It has been a decent Giro so far for smaller teams, hopefully that remains the case in the next two weeks and maybe just maybe a Bardiani stage win is on the horizon.
Week two of the Giro is fast approaching with a Strade Bianche style stage straight after the first rest day, another hilly stage to Bagno di Romagna, one of the last remaining chances for the sprinters in Verona, the fearsome Monte Zoncolan plus a trip into Slovenia.
Can Giacomo Nizzolo finally win a Giro d’Italia stage win? Will Egan Bernal extend his lead in pink or will someone else prevail as the terrain gets tougher? The Dolomites are coming. The 104th Giro d’Italia has only just got started…
