Riding the Giro rollercoaster

I’m 31 and been a pro since I was 19. In those years I’ve done a few Tours of France and Spain, but I’ve never managed to make it to the Giro d’Italia, and funnily enough I’d never really considered it. So when Jonathan struck up a relationship with Big Kahuna Giro boss Angelo Zomengnan and scored us an invite it became a new addition to my race calendar.

Whitey, our sporting director, convinced me it was effectively a three week training camp with great food and chilled-out racing and would serve as perfect build up to the Tour de France. It’s stage four and I have come to the conclusion that although he was not lying to me, he was certainly not telling me the whole truth. Twenty-four hours ago I would have said he lied to me, but I have since slipped into “couldn’t care less” mode and will not accuse him of such behavior. Let me tell you about my day yesterday.

We won the team time trial – fantastic, much hard work, the best team to roll off the ramp. Christian and Z-Dave were exceptional. Christian carried us the last kilometers and crossed the line first because he took us there. He got the leader’s jersey, the second-ever American to do so and he did on the 20th anniversary of the first American’s win, Andy Hampsten. Very right.

Most grand tours would follow this with a gentle first stage, but not the Giro. We did close to 4,000 meters of climbing, spent almost six hours in the saddle and lost Zabriskie to a crash that was just not his fault and devastating to us. Julian Dean (right post crash) also went down in this crash and being the Kiwi Guy he is will not say how bad he is, we came to the conclusion at dinner when he wasn’t there that he’s very bad and just not letting on to us, a proper chap but sad to see. So we defended it incredibly well and Christian was so bloody unlucky to lose it by just one second. All he’d been doing was TTT work for the 10 previous days so the fact he could even finish that close on such an exceptionally hard day was impressive.

So we start stage three with a battle-damaged Kiwi Guy, no Z-Dave and one second off the leader’s jersey. The start is in the center of some coastal town in Sicily. We get misguided by the random organizational arrows and clueless police and lose the team cars in the process. The clock ticks faster than our bus and we end up running very late and parked a distance from the start. A team car tracks us down and unloads the bikes, we all kit up and prepare to tackle the Monday morning Sicilian traffic and make our way to the start only to realize Maggy doesn’t have his bike. A higher level of panic now ensues.

Fortunately Whitey remembers there’s a random bike in the bus hold so we grab that and chuck the Big Man on it. It’s way too small and has non-compatible pedals but nobody really cares by this point. We get to the start (which has been delayed especially for us) and set off. I realize I have the wrong wheels in and get them changed thinking I’ve got the time. I didn’t have the time.

I bump into Kiwi Guy in the confusion and we set off together, the start area is empty and there is no sign whatsoever of the Giro peloton. The neutral is 8 kilometers so we try not to fret. We set off and soon start fretting. The Lampre team car pulls up next to us and tells us to hold on, we grab on to each side and get accelerated up to warp speed. This is on a bumpy town avenue lined with people; Sicilian people don’t seem to have any fear of moving vehicles or laws. It was like the red sea parting, only we didn’t have the faith.

Eventually we did get on to the peloton, about 500 meters before Kilometer 0, the official race start. One good thing about the Giro is that nobody races from Kilometer 0, but I’m never complacent about such things as I’ve had a couple of bad experiences missing the old starty poo and it’s really not worth the pain.

Then we did Giro racing action for a couple of hours, just riding along, up, and around Mount Etna, as soon as we got to the top it started raining and we all got very scared and a little cold. The roads here are unsafe at the best of times. The reason Z-Dave (his first crash) and Kiwi Guy had crashed yesterday because a water bottle had exploded on the road and that small amount of water had created a mini ice rink because of the accumulated dirt on the surface. So we had the fear. Amazingly we made it back down to the coast without incident. Then the speed started to pick up and we started to weave along the coast and around the peninsula. The worst of the day was over, or so I thought. How very wrong I was.

Bradley Wiggins later told me that he predicted a massive pileup 2 kilometers before it happened. He had said to Cav, “I smell a massive pileup in the next 5 kilometers of around 30 guys.” I could have used this precognitive moment as I was right behind the guy who started what became a 40-man pile up. The road was damp and his bike disappeared from under him. I was getting Paris-Nice flash back. Fortunately I seem to have mastered the art of avoiding hitting the deck immediately in such a situation. Everybody around me fell before I did and so somehow I managed to fall in a heap on top of them all at a slower velocity as everybody was coming to a halt. Whitey was already at my side by the time I had managed to unfurl myself from the wreckage and free my leg.

“You all right mate?” To which I replied, “Wow, I’m like Harry Houdini…Where’s my shoe?” So there I was tip-toeing among the bodies and bikes trying to find my shoe which had been ripped off. This was a first for me and gave the whole situation an air of ridiculousness. Anyway, I chased back on, changed my bike and got ready for the finale. This is where it got really dangerous. I miraculously missed another crash coming around a left-hander at high speed with about 15 kilometers to go. All I saw was a cloud of dust as somebody went off to the right, then guys falling off to the left, including Stuey, Macca (who both broke their collar bones), and Maggy (who was basically OK). The guy in front of me rode straight over the legs of a Tinkoff rider and I squeezed through last.

Now we were in the proper final. We went up a short cobbled climb and then were on what was basically a singletrack road with blind corners and walls on either side. Everybody had the fear and was pumped with adrenaline by now, so it was crazy fast. Amidst all this chaos Christian (right in pink) was holding his place at the front like it was a Chicago training ride – very impressive. Bettini pulled off one of his typical defying-the-laws-of-physics moments while making a right-hander that was much sharper than he expected and instead of hitting the curb and body slamming the wall as any mere mortal racing cyclist would, he hopped onto the curb contorted his body and twisted his bike and nonchalantly slid off the pavement back into the peloton. INCREDIBLE.

I was so impressed I even went and told him, with 4 kilometers to go. At this point Whitey comes on the radio and says, “Now boys, the last 3 kilometers are descending and narrow, real dangerous so be careful.” Brilliant. It was like being on a rollercoaster and by this point I was in the spirit of the whole thing and was having a great time. Not many people get to experience such craziness and I was relishing the whole malarkey. We crossed the line in one piece, jibbering wrecks, but in one piece. We’d made it through 230 kilometers of Giro racing in Sicily and were now off the back to the mainland. The worst was behind us. Oh how very very wrong I was… TO BE CONTINUED.

P.S. Stuey finished with his broken collar bone. In an SMS he sent to me later, he said, “I’m ok – just fuggin frustrating bro. Get taken out by some stinkoff c$@. Not happy. Mate if my legs aren’t broken I’ll finish. You know that. Was only one bone.” I love Stuart.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 3:13 pm and is filed under Rider Diaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.