Category: Giro d’Italia
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Astana continue to bully the peloton
It seems I was premature in describing Rigoberto Uran’s return to fine fettle. He’s still not dead, but doctors are frowning at his charts. On stage nine, a familiar sequence of events played out. Fabio Aru attacked and his main rivals followed – except for Rigoberto Uran. The top riders opened a gap on the…
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Rigoberto Uran not dead yet
Death would actually have been a somewhat catastrophic outcome. He only had a cold. A blocked nose may have been why he lost a bit of time earlier in the race, but on stage eight’s summit finish, he finished with the main contenders, hinting that he may be back somewhere near his best. Uran is…
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Diego Ulissi briefly emerges from the inaction
It was a weird stage. Which wasn’t to say that it was exciting, because it wasn’t. It seems that 264km in the middle of a Grand Tour is enough to sap any enthusiasm for attacking. Maximum effort moves a lot closer to sustainable effort after that sort of distance until eventually the former can propel…
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Andre Greipel engineers a win
Greipel wins. Take that, pedals! I didn’t see this. Not even the highlights. I was busy watching Prometheus for the second time in a week. Even so, I have a fair idea how it went. A wide-mouthed man emerged from behind a team-mate and punished his bike all the way to the line. After that,…
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Alberto Contador drags everyone onto the podium
The way a Grand Tour’s supposed to work is like gravy. You mix everything up, heat it and it’s delicious, but it’s only as it cools that you see the fat slowly rise to the top. In this analogy, fat’s the good bit because fat equals flavour. The thing is, fat alone doesn’t do the…
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Infant-faced Formolo first following bloody big break bedlam
Stage four was won by Italian rider, Davide Formolo, who looks like Peter Sagan’s younger brother’s even younger cousin. Yes, that does basically just add up to being Peter Sagan’s cousin, but saying that wouldn’t express how young Formolo looks. Really young. Formolo was in a monster break that contained about 30 riders. At one…
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Pozzovivo’s apparently not too bad considering he’s been hospitalised with head injuries
Speaking about being held up by a crash on stage two, Domenico Pozzovivo said: “I try to console myself, saying that the time lost isn’t as important as getting injured and I got through it okay.” A few hours later, he’d crashed. And not just your average slide-off-and-expose-your-buttocks-through-ripped-shorts crash. This was a bad one. He…
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Domenico Pozzovivo loses a minute
Damn it, Domenico. As if you don’t have enough to contend with all your myriad flaws, you have to go and give everyone a whopping great head start as well. The Giro is not going well for my man. A crappy team time trial saw him and his AG2R-La Mondiale team-mates lose 48 seconds and…
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Gerrans leads and Hansen continues in decidely Australian start to 2015 Giro d’Italia
It wasn’t an Australian start in the sense that it started in Australia. I know the Giro plays it fast and loose with its definition of ‘Italia’ but that really would be a bit much. No, it was just Australian in that an Australian rider now leads the race after his Australian team won the…
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Team leaders for the 2015 Giro d’Italia
The Giro d’Italia starts on Saturday. It often passes without much comment in the UK because unlike the other two Grand Tours it isn’t shown on terrestrial TV. It’s a good race though. Worth following. Last year’s winner, Nairo Quintana, is busying himself with the Tour de France this year and so won’t be taking…