Winners and Sinners - 2017 Giro d'Italia stages 1-9 recap
Giro 100 took a while to warm up in truth, and while it's now bubbling away nicely, the turn of events that sparked the race into life on Blockhaus may leave a sour taste.
The first nine stages have been littered with sprints and long 200km+ parcours - which haven't exactly captured the imagination - but have been nuanced by unorthodox finishes, a future Grand Tours mountains star and yet another incident involving a vehicle that just shouldn't have been there.
An Unlikely Winner
I'm pretty sure no one in the world had money on Bora-Hansgrohe's Lukas Postlberger to win stage one. Anyone lucky enough to do so would've been at least £500 richer.
The script was written. The lead-out trains would do their jobs and it would be a straight forward sprint shootout between the big four; Caleb Ewan (Orica-Scott), Andre Greipel (Lotto-Soudal), Fernando Gaviria (Quick-Step Floors) and Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe).
But no. In a tumultuous 21 months (since August 2015), we've seen the triumph of Leicester City winning the Premier League, Brexit and the orange numpty become President of the United States of America, but none were as oddly surprising as Postlberger taking the stage win and the maglia rosa on his Grand Tour debut instead of leading out his own sprinter, Sam Bennett - who we learned afterwards had told him to go for the win because they couldn't catch up to him.
The Austrian had a great first week; a stage win to claim the maglia rosa and third on the glorious breakaway win on stage six.
Not The Winner
As much as Postlberger's unorthodox win on stage one was a pleasant surprise, Luka Pibernik's false victory on stage five into Messina was hilariously awkward.
The Slovenian Bahrain-Merida rider, riding for Vincenzo Nibali into his hometown, clearly hadn't consulted the road book before the stage.
All day the commentators had told us there would be two 6km laps of Messina, but either Bahrain-Merida's Sporting Directors hadn't told Pibernik or he just got carried away by the occasion.
As he spread his arms wide in victory and looked behind, I can only imagine the sinking feeling that flushed through his body as he realised he'd got it all wrong. Not only were the lead-out trains behind him not pushing that hard but we could clearly hear the bell to signal the final lap.
Pibernik must have been thinking to himself, 'Ha, I've done it! This breakaway lark isn't as difficult as I'd thought....hang on....why are they still riding? Oh s**t...'
A Future Winner?
Watching the birth of a new star on the Grand Tour stage is a beautiful, exciting thing. Chris Froome has his moment when he took his maiden victory on stage seven of the 2012 Tour de France on La Planche des Belles Filles.
Well on Mount Etna on stage four we saw the blossoming of 25-year-old Jan Polanc from UAE Team Emirates. After being in the breakaway all day he ditched his colleagues at the foot of Etna and began the grueling challenge of summiting the highest mountain in Europe on his own.
While the Slovenian had a decent advantage on the peloton it wasn't enough to rest on. He looked like he was pedaling squares and was going to crack several times but hung on through gritted teeth to win the stage, the King of the Mountains jersey and the hearts of every cycling fan. Watching that kind of individual performance against all the odds is what sport is all about.
Stage-Ruining Sinner
One incident involving vehicles in cycling races is too many but in recent years there have been far, far too many - especially in Grand Tours.
I'm not sure you can put it down to incompetence, though. These riders/drivers are highly trained and very experienced but sometimes being in the wrong place at the wrong time is enough to cause a major accident and injury - as happened on stage nine on the approach to Blockhaus.
At the point in the race where the incident happened, Movistar had already been controlling the pace of the race for some time, and because it wasn't a racing incident, no one on the team felt that they should slow down for their injured peers.
The question is whether rivals should take advantage of their injured counterparts, which is arguably what happened on Sunday. With Movistar pressing on and Nairo Quintana attacking for the maglia rosa, Britons Geraint Thomas and Adam Yates effectively dropped out of contention, with Thomas' Team Sky co-leader Mikel Landa a race ending 26'56" down.
Stages 10-15
Nairo Quintana is only 30 seconds ahead of time trial specialist Tom Dumoulin on general classification, which is by no means a comfy situation for the Colombian.
Being a more-or-less flat time trial, we should expect the Dutchman to take over the maglia rosa for the foreseeable few stages afterwards given there aren't any mountain finishes.
From stage 14 onward, however, it's Alps almost everyday and it's very difficult to see anyone other than Quintana or Thibaut Pinot succeeding there.
The first nine stages have been littered with sprints and long 200km+ parcours - which haven't exactly captured the imagination - but have been nuanced by unorthodox finishes, a future Grand Tours mountains star and yet another incident involving a vehicle that just shouldn't have been there.
An Unlikely Winner
 |
| Credit: cycling.today |
The script was written. The lead-out trains would do their jobs and it would be a straight forward sprint shootout between the big four; Caleb Ewan (Orica-Scott), Andre Greipel (Lotto-Soudal), Fernando Gaviria (Quick-Step Floors) and Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe).
But no. In a tumultuous 21 months (since August 2015), we've seen the triumph of Leicester City winning the Premier League, Brexit and the orange numpty become President of the United States of America, but none were as oddly surprising as Postlberger taking the stage win and the maglia rosa on his Grand Tour debut instead of leading out his own sprinter, Sam Bennett - who we learned afterwards had told him to go for the win because they couldn't catch up to him.
The Austrian had a great first week; a stage win to claim the maglia rosa and third on the glorious breakaway win on stage six.
Not The Winner
 |
| Credit: telegraph.co.uk |
The Slovenian Bahrain-Merida rider, riding for Vincenzo Nibali into his hometown, clearly hadn't consulted the road book before the stage.
All day the commentators had told us there would be two 6km laps of Messina, but either Bahrain-Merida's Sporting Directors hadn't told Pibernik or he just got carried away by the occasion.
As he spread his arms wide in victory and looked behind, I can only imagine the sinking feeling that flushed through his body as he realised he'd got it all wrong. Not only were the lead-out trains behind him not pushing that hard but we could clearly hear the bell to signal the final lap.
Pibernik must have been thinking to himself, 'Ha, I've done it! This breakaway lark isn't as difficult as I'd thought....hang on....why are they still riding? Oh s**t...'
A Future Winner?
 |
| Credit: velouk.net |
Well on Mount Etna on stage four we saw the blossoming of 25-year-old Jan Polanc from UAE Team Emirates. After being in the breakaway all day he ditched his colleagues at the foot of Etna and began the grueling challenge of summiting the highest mountain in Europe on his own.
While the Slovenian had a decent advantage on the peloton it wasn't enough to rest on. He looked like he was pedaling squares and was going to crack several times but hung on through gritted teeth to win the stage, the King of the Mountains jersey and the hearts of every cycling fan. Watching that kind of individual performance against all the odds is what sport is all about.
Stage-Ruining Sinner
 |
| Credit: cyclingtips.com |
I'm not sure you can put it down to incompetence, though. These riders/drivers are highly trained and very experienced but sometimes being in the wrong place at the wrong time is enough to cause a major accident and injury - as happened on stage nine on the approach to Blockhaus.
At the point in the race where the incident happened, Movistar had already been controlling the pace of the race for some time, and because it wasn't a racing incident, no one on the team felt that they should slow down for their injured peers.
The question is whether rivals should take advantage of their injured counterparts, which is arguably what happened on Sunday. With Movistar pressing on and Nairo Quintana attacking for the maglia rosa, Britons Geraint Thomas and Adam Yates effectively dropped out of contention, with Thomas' Team Sky co-leader Mikel Landa a race ending 26'56" down.
Stages 10-15
Nairo Quintana is only 30 seconds ahead of time trial specialist Tom Dumoulin on general classification, which is by no means a comfy situation for the Colombian.
Being a more-or-less flat time trial, we should expect the Dutchman to take over the maglia rosa for the foreseeable few stages afterwards given there aren't any mountain finishes.
From stage 14 onward, however, it's Alps almost everyday and it's very difficult to see anyone other than Quintana or Thibaut Pinot succeeding there.
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