After extreme weather again wreaked havoc on the Giro d’Italia, Felix Lowe wonders if a solution could be found in switching slots with La Vuelta
Can anyone remember a Giro d’Italia where heavy snow or rain or freak withdrawals hasn’t played a part? It seems like RCS, the Giro’s organisers, are in a constant battle with finding a Cima Coppi – the highest point of the race – that avoids cancellation or neutralisation owing to bad weather. Soon Fausto’s memory will be only associated with climbs under 2,000m, just to be on the safe side.
The latest manifestation came this May during a sodden opening two weeks of the race, culminating in the 11th-hour omission of the Gran San Bernardo (at 2,469 metres, intended to be the loftiest climb of the Giro). Following a winter ski season hampered by a snow shortfall, there was, ironically, too much of the white stuff up top to let the race pass.
What was supposed to be a 206km slog featuring the Cima Coppi was reduced to a 75km blast starting at the foot of the lesser Croix de Coeur and concluding at Crans Montana. Admittedly, it was exciting to watch Thibaut Pinot and Jefferson Cepeda knocking seven shades out of each other only for Colombia’s Einer Rubio to exploit their spat and take a memorable win. But ‘exciting’ is not how the GC battle could be described. Waiting for one of the favourites to attack throughout the 106th edition was like, well, waiting for a Mark Cavendish sprint win: you needed to hang around right to the end.
So muted was the fight for pink that we saw more action from the riders’ representative, Adam Hansen, than we did from the leading GC contenders. And when they did race the Plan B Cima Coppi in the Dolomites, it was less about ‘G’ than his Canadian namesake, debutant Derek Gee coming runner-up for a fourth time while pink jersey rivals Geraint Thomas and Primož Roglič cancelled each other out. If the backloaded percorso eventually hit the bullseye in that decisive uphill time-trial, it did the race few favours in the buildup. It certainly didn’t help that Covid reared its ugly head, either. You can’t help but think that had Remco Evenepoel stayed around longer, Roglič, Thomas and João Almeida would have been forced to come out of their stasis a little earlier.
Holding back was an understandable, if predictable, choice for the favourites. The rain and freezing temperatures only compounded matters. It contributed to the most attritional Giro in recent memory with 51 riders forced out, largely through sickness or weather-related crashes, or in Ta
