2023-05-23 05:38:50
22/05/2023
with the colombians Éiner Rubio and Santiago Buitrago with the option of getting into the top-10and following the second day of rest this Monday, the Giro d’Italia begins its third and final week, a mountain festival for an exhausted peloton.
Today’s stages (see sketch) and Friday favor the interests of the beetlesbut it will be necessary to see how they respond following the physical effort made until now.
Marked by rain and cold, the Giro has lost a third of its riders, either due to illness or accident, in a country that It has suffered violent floods that have claimed 14 lives. Some are on the edge. “It’s my 16th Grand Tour and I’ve never seen such difficult conditions,” said Frenchman Maxime Bouet.
On Friday the cyclists said enough. Threatening a strike, they demanded that the 13th stage be cut and the organizer, RCS, ended up accepting.
“A good decision if we want to reach Rome with at least 50 riders”, applauded the British Geraint Thomas, winner of the Tour de France in 2018.
But several former runners disagree. “We are destroying our sport,” said Marc Madiot, manager of Groupama-FDJ and double winner of the Paris-Roubaix.
According to the former French runner, the runners “are losing the thread of what is the history of cycling, the legends of Eddy Merckx, the moments of bravery of Luis Ocaña…”. “Cycling is something we do that others can’t do,” he added.
In the factory they will be covered
“I back what Marc says,” French legend Bernard Hinault, who won the Liège-Bastogne-Liège race under a snowstorm in 1980, told AFP, an edition that 21 runners finished out of the 174 who started.
“I have already had to get angry with riders and I have told them: ‘If you do not agree to cycle, go to the factory, there you will be covered,'” added the winner of five editions of the Tour.
The abandonment in this Giro of the favorite, the Belgian Remco Evenepoel, due to a positive test for covid-19 also caused some criticism. “Leave the battle before it begins”, criticized the Italian reference Francesco Moser.
Adam Hansen, elected president of the CPA (Associated Professional Cyclists) in March, responded: “People don’t realize what riders go through.”
“When a cyclist abandons a race as important as the Giro, it is really his last resort following days of fighting,” added Hansen, a record for consecutive participations in the three grand tours (20 between 2011 and 2018).
Former Belgian world champion Philippe Gilbert, now a commentator for Eurosport, defended the “wise” decision to cut Friday’s stage short.
Racehorses
According to the director of the Giro, Mauro Vegni, It is not the “most difficult” edition he has experienced, remembering that in 1995 “It rained from the first to the last stage”, but he acknowledged that “the way of running has changed”.
In fact, the 2023 Giro opens an old debate. On the one hand, the organization, whose objective is to offer a sporting event, but also to earn money. And on the other, the runners, in the front line for the good and the bad.
Well-being and mental and physical health have gained relevance in a sport which has often suffered cases of ‘burn-out’ (exhaustion).
“Some teams and organizers only see riders as replaceable racehorses,” lamented Hansen, who favors shorter stages in general.
Geraint Thomas, one of the veterans of the peloton, was dispatched on Saturday once morest criticism from former riders. “There are many things that happened in the 80s and 90s that are not done now. We’re proud of this, so you can say what you want,” he said, not wanting to mention the word doping.
This is the general classification
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