Could any of us have predicted what has happened over these first nine days of the 2014 Giro d’Italia?
We should have known it was going to be a mad edition of the Italian Grand Tour all the way up in Belfast when the kicked off with Dan Martin hitting the ground and breaking his collarbone when the race had barely begun.
Martin’s Giro was over within fifteen minutes, hand is plans for the weekend went from riding in front of home crowds to travelling to Dublin by car to get surgery on his fractured collarbone.
Orica-GreenEDGE’s race got off to a significantly better start. They stormed the team time trial, gifting Svein Tuft the first maglia rosa on his birthday.
They followed this up nicely in Stage 2 when Michael Matthews inherited the jersey from his experienced teammate when placing behind Marcel Kittel, the hot favourite for the stage.
Kittel then stormed Stage 3 into Dublin in what is perhaps the most impressive sprint since Mark Cavendish’s victory on the Champs-Elysees in 2010. It looked for all the world like the rest of the Giro’s sprint stages were going to be a procession, but then the big German was struck down by fever on the rest day.
The Giro started Stage 4 without its biggest name sprinter, but Kittel might have thought he’d ducked out at the right time. The majority of the stage was neutralised, and when it wasn’t, the peloton were skittering all over the wet Italian roads.
Nacer Bouhanni took his first win in a Grand Tour sprinting from a very much reduced peloton, who were probably relieved to not have a bunch sprint the next day. Diego Ulissi proved his worth to Lampre-Merida by beating Cadel Evans in a sprint to the line for Stage 5.
Evans by this point had been flying under the radar, but on Stage 6 he would be flung into the headlines.
A massive crash decimated the peloton, knocking Joaquim Rodriguez out of the race after he broke ribs and a finger. Evans avoided it, and charged up the final climb with a select group that included Michael Matthews, who was still in pink.
Evans gained time on Quintana, Uran and Basso among others, while Matthews came around Evans and sprinted for his first Giro stage win. The debate still rages on as to whether Evans should have waited, but nonetheless, he was left within touching distance of the maglia rosa.
Stage 7 was relatively uneventful, mainly due to the remainder of the peloton nursing wounds, and Nacer Bouhanni increased his market value by winning another stage.
Stage 8 marked the beginning of the Apennines, and it was a brave effort from Julian Arredondo and then Pierre Rolland to evade the peloton that stole the show.
Unfortunately for both men they were caught in the final few hundred metres, and when a Daniel Moreno attack failed, Diego Ulissi once again proved his capabilities as a puncheur.
Michael Matthews had been dropped, and the pink jersey was moving on to the shoulders of another Australian in Cadel Evans. Cuddles looked good in pink on the podium, but he knew it was a long way to go to defend the lead.
Nevertheless on stage 9 BMC rode and protected Evans’ lead while a breakaway duo, Pieter Weening and Davide Malacarne, contested the stage win. It was Orica-GreenEDGE’s Weening who took the win, capping off an enormously successful start to the Giro for the Australian outfit.
Domenico Pozzovivo did put 30 seconds into Evans, but he still holds 57 seconds going into the rest day over his nearest rival Rigoberto Uran, and 1:45 over arguably his biggest rival Nairo Quintana.
It hasn’t been a quiet start to this year’s Giro d’Italia. The Irish grande partenza gave us plenty of rain but plenty of drama, drama that continued on Italian soil. It’s easy to see why the Giro is seen as the most difficult of the three Grand Tours, and thanks to this weekend why it’s seen as the most beautiful.
Going into week two, we can only hope that the racing is just as exciting, but with less crashes, please.
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