A sprint finish today. Hopefully it stays dry as the finish has some tight turns and polished pavé.
Diluvio e Eulalio: it poured, rain was running down the roads in rivulets and in some places a torrent. The early breakaway took a while to form with the Visma-LAB team trying hard to filter the moves, including Victor Campenaerts going the move that did stick. Was he there to police things, to disrupt them or just see who was there under all the rain jackets? Because Alfondo Eulalio was there, the Bahrain rider started the day just over a minute down on GC. Lidl-Trek seemed to miss this or gambled others would chase but they didn’t.
Igor Arrieta attacked the 13 rider breakaway first with 52km to go and got a gap of 30 seconds when Eulalio rode across on the main climb of the day. The pair had every reason to co-operate, the “stage for you, jersey for me” scenario.
Once in the streets of Potenza the race took on a Wacky Races feel where the damp roads had their say. First Arrieta went sliding out on bend, then Eulalio moments later. This allowed Arrieta to get back so the pair could dispute the finish. Only for Arrieta to lock up on another corner and go off course. Eulalio now had a gap but his legs were tetanised by the cold. Arrieta began to close in and in a slow motion sprint came around for the win with Eulalio taking the maglia rosa as more than a consolation. All this on a day when earlier Mathys Rondel had smashed into the back window of a UAE team car and a moto in the race fell and took out several riders too.
Arrieta and Eulalio have been names to watch for the future, Eulalio a “neo-pro to watch” last year. Now we’ll use the present tense. Arrieta can feature for more stage wins. It’ll be interesting to see how long Eulalio spends in the lead, he’s got over six minutes on Jonas Vingegaard and company and is a good climber.
The stage was a flop for Lidl-Trek to lose the jersey so quickly. Visma-LAB were notably absent from the chase too. Now Vingegaard won’t lose much sleep about dropping Eulalio, and keeping the Portuguese rider in pink can even save Visma some work but still, six minutes is generous.
The Route: just 141km and a spin along the coast on big roads before the easy ascension through Cava de Tirreni. Today’s route sticks to the flattest roads possible rather taking any coastal cliff roads or tackling the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.
The Finish: if the Giro returns to Napoli and finishes by the sea, this is in a different place with a new route. It’s big streets through the city and then runs alongside the docks with 4km to go.
In the final kilometre there’s a tight left turn onto cobbles and the road begins to climb to a 180° corner (or two right-hand corners as there’s a small space in between) and then 400m of finishing straight to the line, all still climbing on cobbles. These are urban pavé but old, the kind where passing traffic noisily slaps the stones and they can be very tricky in the wet. Right at the finish the cobbles switch to large flagstones.
The Contenders: three sprinters lead the picks. Paul Magnier (Soudal-Quickstep) comes first because he’s won twice already and is agile for this uphill finish and the cobbles but with some risks too, he’s not the most delicate of bike handlers and besides two wins already is plenty.
Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) has been close and today is a good chance. The uphill finish is within his range but we’ll see if the leadout changes, perhaps using big Max Walscheid up before little Simone Consonni takes over on the climb?
Tobias Lund (Decathlon-CMA CGM) is the third pick. Out of the picture in Sofia he had punctured on the run into town and lost energy in the late chase.
Dylan Groenewegen (Unibet Rose Rockets) gets a mention too, the slow turn and the uphill run to the line suits him less, but the penalty is moderate rather than severe.
It’s hard to get beyond these four. Others can win but all their chances seem reduced. Madhis Mihkels (EF) for example has done well but can he get ahead of the big names cited already in a straight sprint? Likewise for all but Ethan Vernon (NSN) is good at seated sprints and this could pay on the cobbled road.
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Magnier, Milan, Lund |
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Groenewegen |
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Vernon |
Weather: up to 21°C and sunshine but some heavy clouds rolling over the race at times which can unleash brief downpours.
TV: KM0 is at 2.05pm the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the sprint finish.
Postcard from Napoli
Carmine Castellano died in March at the age of 89 in his home town of Sorrento, a spin down the coast from Napoli. He was the Giro’s race director from 1993 to 2003.
There’s a blog post to do on race organising being a thankless task. If you do a great job and everything goes without a hitch, everyone congratulates the winner. If there’s one problem with the route, even a stray dog, then the organiser must be to blame. Nevertheless Castellano gave up being a lawyer working in the courts of Naples to run bike races.
After starting local races he was on the organising committee for the Giro stage from Potenza to Sorrento in 1974. The race had a central command in Milan and delegated on-the-ground organisation to local committees for each stage; the Tour de Romandie does this today. Castellano became the Giro’s man in the south. In the mid-80’s he moved to Milan to take on more work and by 1989 he ran the whole Giro, notionally alongside Vincenzo Torriani but as de facto organiser.
In 1993 Castellano took over formally as the race director. He was a pioneer in the literal sense, opening up new routes for the Giro. The Mortirolo and Zoncolan were both Castellano innovations, he was modest enough to attribute their discovery to locals but visionary to include them. The choice suited the race as they offered spectacle and notoriety without high altitude and so less risky for a visit in May. One high peak the Giro did visit to was the Colle delle Finestre in 2005, the first visit of a grand tour to a gravel road for a long time.
If the Giro had a golden age with Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali, it enjoyed a boom under Castellano thanks to Marco Pantani and the flourishing Italian cycling scene. In 1997 the Giro resembled the Italian stage race championships with 131 Italians out of 180 starters. Only the bubble burst and Pantani’s ejection from the 1999 Giro after failing a blood test played a large part in this. Ejecting Pantani from the race must have been Castellano’s most difficult moment but he said “respect for the rules comes before everything else”. He was a lawyer after all.