When Domestiques Raided Restaurants

This is just one more reason the Giro will always be the grand tour in my eyes. It's very possible riders did all this in France and Belgium at the time, but there's an Italian flavor here that is undeniable.

Pay special attention to :53, when the waterboys go nuts looting a local store, and a beautiful moment at 2:07 when a rider uses an old-school technique to open a mineral water bottle. Try that on a carbon stem today... Ah, the good old days.

Mangia!

Giro Promoters Lose Collective Minds

First they move the Tour of California to May so it conflicts with the Giro (?!?#$%?), now this absurd proposal.

It's enough that winter is coming. Do they have to mock and torment us so?

ToC versus Giro? Hmm.

Did you hear about the Tour of California being moved to... wait for it... middle of May next year? In the excitement of the Giro, I missed news of this howler of a mistake. From a post on Podium Cafe, back in May of this year:

The 2010 edition of the Tour of California will take place May 16-23 next year instead of its usual Februrary slot. Organizer Andrew Messick says "We will be head-to-head with the Giro but frankly I don't think that will really affect us. The Giro is a great race, but very few cyclists who are serious about the Tour de France will also race the Giro."

Oh, of course! That's the way it worked this year, too! Armstrong, Leipheimer, Wiggins, Sastre, Cavendish (I'll stop there, just to limit the barrage of irony) -- all those guys weren't really planning on riding the Tour. It was like this: They finished the Giro and said to themselves, "Hey, the legs feel pretty fresh, maybe I'll line up in France, too. Lemme find out if there's still room."

No! Wait! What they were really thinking was, "That was a pretty good race, but if I could have done a one-week event over in California, now that would have been even better..."

The same AEG exec has also said, "There was just no appetite to stay a February race." I guess that would explain why all those superstars rode there this year. And why the race had the biggest live audience in U.S. cycling history. It's because everyone was too cold.

The Velophoria stock ticker currently lists my favorite U.S. race, about which I have unabashedly raved in numerous posts, at half the value it held back in February.

I won't even go into how bummed I am that the race won't be in February; it's been the light at the end of winter for me the last couple years, the inspiration that gets me out riding during the snowy pre-season. But okay, so the weather's a problem. How about April? How about June?

How about any week that doesn't conflict with a Grand Tour?

Sigh.

(Go here for more coverage of this story.)

Rats!

General classification after stage 17, 2009 Giro d'Italia

1 Denis Menchov (Rus) Rabobank 72.28.24
2 Danilo Di Luca (Ita) LPR Brakes - Farnese Vini 0.26
3 Franco Pellizotti (Ita) Liquigas 2.00
4 Ivan Basso (Ita) Liquigas 3.28
5 Carlos Sastre (Spa) Cervelo Test Team 3.30
6 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Astana 4.32

Ciao, Regazzi!

I awoke this past Monday to the wrenching awareness that I wasn’t going to be watching a stage of the Giro d’Italia on television.

I had subscribed for the month to RAI, the international Italian-language cable station. I only let the fact that I don’t speak Italian daunt me for a moment.

See, this was my first bicycling grand tour; I wanted to do it right. I'm proud to say that, for the last three weeks in May, I went through a tiny version of the ups and downs I imagine the riders go through while racing the Giro. (Okay – a very tiny version).

I watched the first handful of stages with great excitement, then got a little burned out after many days of flat stages, watching the poor guys slog through the chilly rain.

It only took about three stages before I started picking up a handful of serviceable Italian phrases, like testa della corsa (“lead group”) and ultimo chilometro (“Final kilometer – run to the TV for the sprint finish”).

I also began to get a better feel for the zesty European heritage of this unique sport. I got a primer, for example, on the deep importance of style to the Italian riders – like the critical issue of the angle of the sunglasses on their team caps during the jersey ceremonies, or the sweet little ritual just before they win a race: Zip up the jersey (to show the sponsor on TV), hand the sunglasses to the team car (to look pretty for the finish line photos), kiss the wedding ring, cross yourself at least once, throw your fists in the air as you cross the line, and then – burst into tears. It all seemed so perfectly Italian.

Then I got excited again – more than ever – when the peloton entered the Dolomites. Boy, some of those weekend mountain stages – particularly Sunday’s Mortirolo climb – were high drama. I loved it.

Finally, there was Sunday, the last stage. I knew that, after all the boys and I had been through together, I had to watch, even though there was little chance Riccó (or anyone) could pip Contador. The time trial ended up being as boring as I had feared. I had to force myself to stay in front of the TV instead of getting on my own bike and heading out on that very fine day. They do say that the final day of many grand tours are ceremonial, at best. I rolled out of my garage that afternoon feeling a little funky (perhaps contributing to the off-key ride I reported on here).

It seems only natural after all those highs and lows that I should wake up feeling blue the day after. It was like waking up the day after returning from a long trip abroad. You certainly don’t love every minute of that kind of travel – but once you’re back home, you’d give good money to re-live any random minute of it.