Roglic, left, and Thomas, with the pink helmet, during the Crans-Montana stage, on Friday 19 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT (EFE)
In the old bars and sleazy shops, next to San Pancracio and his sprig of parsley with his back to him, hung a small sign that was considered the pinnacle of ingenuity: “Today you don’t trust, tomorrow you will”, a condemnation of nothing more than the best of the 106° Giro d’Italia, in a way they’ve proudly embraced it.
Today we do not attack, tomorrow yes, it is the announcement that dawns every morning that Geraint Thomas, Primoz Roglic and other champions who have made waiting their only weapon express with phrases like: “There are still many very much hard days ahead of us.”, “The last week will be the big bang” or “The fireworks are just around the corner”.
However, it does not seem that the very calm and sunny Trento, almost Germanic in its order and cleanliness, with its angular and sloping vineyards and as traditional as its councils against all reforms, the city where the break took place does not, although this To the south, closing the view of Lake Garda, rises the massif of Monte Bondone, whose 1,632 meter peak and its legends await the runners on Tuesday at the end of a stage with several previous climbs and 203 kilometers.
“Those of you who enter here lose all hope,” Dante wrote at the gates of his hell, a note perhaps not due to the laments of the fans but to the mournful cries of the surviving cyclists (of the 176, 132 remain ) listened on the left) describes better than any bad mood the toughest Giro of rain, cold, falls and illnesses that many remember.
He eliminated Remco Evenepoel – the young man who touched the nose and put through so much thanks to the time trials the Giro instituted to seduce him – in a combined attack from Primoz Roglic who managed to torment the Belgian prodigy in five minutes Rise that pushed him to his limits and the Covid that forced him to give up, the Giro victory remained a game of feints without substance, of conformism and fear between the two that evenepoel worried about the most, Roglic himself, 33 years old, and Thomas, 36. Just two seconds separate them at the top of the standings, still led by Bruno Armirail’s borrowed pink jersey. A minimal difference due to the two time trials and a bonus and considering that the last day that can make a difference consists of a very hard time trial climb to Monte Lussari (after a 11.3km plain with goat and bike change). and 7,300 meters of elevation gain up to 1,760 meters of a sanctuary with an average gradient of 12.1% and peaks on a mountain trail of 22% on the border with Slovenia. The most calculating fans do not doubt that both Thomas, winner of a Tour Thanks to time trial, like Roglic, despite losing a Tour that seemed to have won in a time trial similar to that of the Planche des Belles Filles against Pogacar, he waits, without scratching on Saturday. That would mean that Friday’s Lavaredo Tre Cime di Lavaredo is the most beautiful postcard in the Dolomites, with its last three kilometers averaging 13% – “the hardest climb of my life,” Eddy Merckx always remembers, winning his first turn — , would leave no trace. And many don’t believe that either. “It’s going to be a riot of controlled explosions,” emphasizes Thomas on the rest day. “I want to compete in the race and not just attack for show.”
Without the emotion of the race, the fan entertains with certain nonsense and sheds a tear with other stories, tempus fugit, said Virgilio, and Mark Cavendish, the Isle of Man sprinter who flew nose-to-handlebars, turned 38 when he Celebrating his first birthday on Sunday and Monday, he used the day off to announce, along with his wife and three adult children, that this will be his last season in the peloton. At the Giro, he says, he’s there – apart from the fact that he talks to the commissioners, who order a barrage of fire on the team cars [esto es, que no adelanten a los corredores que se van rezagando para colocarse a cola del pelotón] at the start of the stage on the hill where the battle for the lead blasts the peloton at 70 an hour and the sprinters survive only mixed between cars, a tough survival between exhaust pipes and brakes and screeches – especially to prepares with Astana the Tour where he will attempt in July to claim his 35th stage win and break the tie for most winners with Eddy Merckx.
The nonsense of EF leader Jonathan Vaughters, a doped cyclist from Lance Armstrong’s gang with a history of Mont Ventoux, who eventually sued the sheriff and called Thibaut Pinot a crybaby for complaining that EF Cepeda used him in the getaway from Crans have driven Montana insane, they arrive in the middle of the great debate that Geraint Thomas wants to open with the generations before him.
Armstrong intervened in the fight, calling his enemy Vaughters a ‘clown fuck’, but before that the Welsh cyclist had highlighted another truth. The old men in the peloton, who are now commentators, are accusing the cyclists in this Giro of having their heads full of watts and calculating what they spend and what’s left, as if, they point out, they believe that everyone arrives at the Giro with a certain amount of watts in your legs and the story goes that you save them and spend them only when there’s a benefit in spending them. That’s what representatives of the EPO generation say, who could shop every night and stock the pantry. And Thomas, who started his career with an Italian team, seems to know what he’s talking about when a journalist asks him what he thinks of this criticism, because he’s not so attacking and calculating. “There were a lot of other things that happened in the 1980s and 1990s that we don’t do anymore and we’re proud of that,” replied the old Welshman. “So now they can say whatever they want.”
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