When cycling began, the bicycles weighed almost 20 kilos, the roads were paths and the stages began at dawn to end at night after traveling 400 and up to 500 kilometers. That was a long time ago. This Friday, at the start of the nineteenth stage of the Giro the riders have stood up. They did not want to travel the 251 kilometers that went from Morbegno to Asti, after yesterday’s very hard day on the Stelvio. At the exit, it was also pouring rain. The organization has yielded, the runners have gotten on the buses, in which they will cover 100 kilometers. They will go down and pedal another 150 to the finish. It is a precedent.
The layout of the Giro is brutal. There is no harder turn. Everyone knows them. Designing a stage like today’s, 251 flat kilometers, the longest of the race and between two mountain days, doesn’t make much sense. But the route has been established for a year.
On Thursday night there were already contacts between the cyclists and the organization. The stage of the Stelvio, of 207 kilometers and more than six hours of effort, had left the peloton very touched. The Giro has many days that exceed 200 kilometers. Mauro Vegni, race director, refused to change today’s route. But this morning he ran into a group of cyclists. The fact that it rained heavily at the start was the last straw for the runners.
The organization has lost its pulse. The cycling collective is accused, and rightly, of unsupportive. It is a guild in which the ‘for himself who can’ usually prevail. On this occasion they have joined, although after yesterday’s magnificent stage this plant three days before the end of the race leaves its image touched in the face of the fans.
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