Week one of the Giro has been a real treat. 21-year-old BMC rider Taylor Phinney showed he is a rider to watch in the future.
At this point he is likely to ride the entire Giro, so doubtful he will line-up for the Tour, but he could well be the backup rider if someone is unable to start.
The opening week is all about the sprinters and they haven’t disappointed. Sky, Orica-GreenEDGE, RaboBank and Garmin-Barracuda are all armed with their top sprinters and have turned up ready to play.
Stage three
Matt Goss took stage three in the bunch sprint and delivered Orica-GreenEDGE its first Grand Tour Stage win, which was a clear objective the team set itself leading into the Giro.
This stage is likely to be more remembered for Roberto Ferrari (Androni Giocattoli-Venezuela) massively deviating from his line on the straight run-in towards the finish with about 125m to go, taking out the front wheel of Mark Cavendish.
Watching the replay in slow motion, I believe that Goss would have held off the fasting finishing Cavendish. If you want to beat Cav, you need to be ahead of him, as no one can generally come over the top of him.
Goss was a good five bike lengths up so he was ideally positioned. Goss is also able to hold his top end for good stretches and he held his speed the whole way to the line holding off Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Barracuda) who, while a tad underdone at present, is always a threat in a bunch sprint.
Farrar would have desperately wanted the stage win to honour close friend Wouter Weylandt who died last year during stage three
The Orica-GreenEDGE lead out was near text book perfect. The team waited patiently before swarming to the front in the final lap and positioned themselves to drop Goss off with about 300m to go.
Cavendish’s problems started well before the crash at about 125m to go. At about the two kilometre to go mark, Cav found himself isolated from his leadout as Peter Kennaugh led the bunch before swinging off for Geraint Thomas.
However Thomas, seeing that Cavendish was further back, sat up. Up until then Sky had five riders up with Cav sitting sixth. The final part of the race had a lot of left and right hand turns and Sky allowed two Astana riders to ‘cut up’ their train, allowing GreenEDGE to seize the moment and make their move. From there they had control.
As Goss’s rivals fought tooth and nail to secure his rear wheel, Cavendish at first positioned himself behind former teammate Mark Renshaw. However, as the line approached he looked to move forward but was a good five bike lengths behind Goss and as he began to wind up his speed, Robert Ferrari massively deviated from his line, swiping Cavendish’s front wheel from under him. Goss took the stage win by a clear set of wheels, with Farrar and Juan Jose’ Haedo sprinting for the minor places.
Grand tours are never without a bit of controversy and Ferrari certainly provided that with his post race comments which are clearly unapologetic: ‘I was doing my sprint. I didn’t see him. I don’t know what happened because it was all behind me, my foot slipped. I had to switch lines because another rider moved abruptly’.
I have watched the video several times and no other rider abruptly moved, Ferrari simply lost all shape – he didn’t actually need to go to his right – he would have been better shooting up the left hand side.
Androni-Venezuela team manger Gianni Savio noted he would make a public apology: “I’m on the bus going to the airport and I will apologize to Mark Cavendish in the name of the team and in the name of Roberto Ferrari for the incorrect behaviour that was not intentional.”
Ferrari has been given a 200 Swiss Franc fine, a 30 second time penalty and a loss of 25 points as he was relegated to last in the stage.
This seems pretty light, given the crash he clearly caused took down race leader Taylor Phinney and Cavendish who was wearing the Red points jersey (which then went to Goss).
Wouter Weylandt tribute
Wouter Weylandt’s death in stage three of last year’s Giro was honoured with a minute’s silence and tributes from his former teammates from Leopard-Trek (now Radioshack-Nissan). The organiser of the Giro Michele Acquarone delivered an emotional speech as did close friend Tyler Farrar. Weylandt’s race number, 108, has also been retired from the race.
Stage four: Team Time Trial
The Giro now reached Italy and opened with the 33.2km Team Time Trial. BMC, Garmin-Barracuda and Sky where the three teams expected to come up with the goods in this stage but with Phinney and Cav left a little worse for wear after the stage three crash, the result was not a foregone conclusion. Team Time Trials are a very difficult component of racing to get right as the really strong guys can crack the weaker guys.
There are nine guys who start and the time is clocked based on (generally) the fifth rider to cross the line. The stage four course was also quite technical and the roads in Italy are not the best.
Orica-GreenEDGE’s Svein Tuft, who is an absolute ‘Diesel’, was charged with setting and controlling the initial pace. Orica-GreenEDGE have shown they can mix it up with the best after winning the TTT in Tirreno-Adriatico but Tuft had a flat tyre with about 7km to go and the team also nearly crashed through a corner, so that was enough to see them end up sixth.
Garmin-Barracuda looked the most organised and drilled and took the stage win with Ramunas Navardauskas taking the Pink Jersey off Phinney. BMC had a stage to forget when they ran very wide on a corner and ended up in the grass. BMC finished 10th, just behind Sky.
Goss and Brett Lancaster are 30 seconds behind Navardauskas, so getting an Orica-GreenEDGE rider into the Pink is unlikely to happen.
The team are still in excellent shape to try and take a few more stage wins, especially with Cav still banged up after stage three.
Stage five
Stage five is a 199km Flat stage from Modena to Fano. I will provide my comments on this once I have had a chance to review the last couple of kilometres in detail. Mark Cavendish took out the stage just earlier, again defeating Matt Goss.
Until next time, clip in!
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