Category: Giro d’Italia
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Steven Kruijswijk fastest uphill – handy when you’re already first and there are only mountains to come
Well that was a bit weird. Alexander Foliforov of the Gazprom-Rusvelo team won the cronoscalata. In cycling, weird is usually bad, but let’s not jump the gun. Foliforov, essentially an unknown, does have a certain amount of pedigree. In 2014, he came fourth in the Tour de l’Avenir, a Tour de France for under-23s which…
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Steven Kruijswijk still infuriatingly insistent that I keep typing out his name
For the second day in a row, race leader Andrey Amador was dropped on a climb only to scorch down the descent and catch the men who left him. It would have been an exceptional recovery if that had been the end of the stage. Sadly for Amador, it wasn’t. By the end of the…
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Mikel Nieve should probably have found himself racing for more than mere stage wins
Apparently there’s an area called the Julian Alps and that’s where the Giro was today. They should knock on Julian’s door more often. He’s fun. The stage win Mikel Nieve adopted the increasingly common ‘strongest man in the day’s break’ approach to win this particular stage. It was some rare good news for Team Sky,…
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Andre Greipel is still riding and still winning
Greipel wins! Take that, pedals! I didn’t watch it, but it sounded like a fairly generic sprint stage. Greipel is the best sprinter left in the race and the very fact that he is still in the race arguably makes a case for his being the best sprinter to have been in the race as…
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Diego Ulissi loves the rumples
You did of course commit Diego Ulissi’s name to memory after he won stage four. Just as well really being as he won stage 11 as well. The Italian has now won 16 races in his home country since 2012 and none anywhere else. Maybe the distance is finally starting to tell in this Giro.…
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Some young lad called Giulio Ciccone wins a stage of the Giro – no idea who he is
Stage 10 didn’t prove quite as messy as I’d hoped. The peloton did indeed split into small groups as predicted, but one of those small groups comprised pretty much all of the favourites. This meant that while there were a lot of meaningless time gaps, there weren’t all that many that mattered. The stage win…
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Primoz Roglic doesn’t need computers (or water)
A time trial is, hardly unsurprisingly, a story of time. Tactics and team-mates become irrelevant. The clock is all. At least that’s normally the case. In Chianti country on stage nine, the weather also played a part. Tom Dumoulin’s verdict was: “It was shit, I had no chance and I didn’t take any risks.” What…
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Gianluca Brambilla pinches everything
That might be it for Tom Dumoulin. It wasn’t so much the time he lost on the gravelly climb of Alpe di Poti, it was the way he lost it. Riders were swarming past him and he finished 38th on the stage. His downfall was triggered by Alejandro Valverde who pushed the pace and got…
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Andre Greipel’s legs and bike continue to work well
Greipel wins! Take that, pedals! Cycling is a messy sport. Given a clear run, Marcel Kittel would win every sprint in this race. Even Andre Greipel says his countryman is the quickest sprinter by some margin. Yet as things stand, Kittel has two wins and Greipel also has two wins. It wasn’t Kittel’s legs that…
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Tim Wellens avoids a compulsive attack by being ahead of everyone
Belgian rider, Tim Wellens, is what you might call a compulsive attacker. If there’s any sort of incline with a handful of kilometres to go, he can’t seem to help himself. He usually makes a fight of things, but it’s hard to win with late attacks like his when the peloton’s going full pelt. On…