Just when the Giro d'Italia risked playing out in grayscale, a polemica arrives to add a splash of colour to its final days. Tom Dumoulin's assured defence of his pink jersey on Thursday's Dolomite leg had the feel of another crucial, though not yet decisive, step towards a final overall victory. Vincenzo Nibali's stinging post-stage criticism of what he decried as the Sunweb rider's cockiness, however, suggests there may still be plenty of life in this race.
When Nibali arrived at the Bahrain-Merida team bus, two kilometres away from the stage 18 finish in Ortisei, he learned that Dumoulin had queried his tactics and those of Movistar's Nairo Quintana in the finale. In particular, the maglia rosa was aggrieved that Nibali and Quintana had allowed fourth-placed Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) to slip away and gain more than a minute in the closing kilometres.
"They are only focusing on me and trying to make me lose instead of trying to win," Dumoulin complained to Eurosport. "In the last moments, they lost a lot of time to the other competitors. I really hope that riding like this they will lose their podium spot in Milan, that would be really nice, and I would be really happy."
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After trying and failing to unseat Dumoulin on the day's third ascent, the Passo Gardena, Nibali was hardly in the mood for a lecture on race tactics from the maglia rosa. Almost an hour after the stage, having showered and changed, Nibali's irritation was still obvious when he emerged from the team bus for an interview with RAI television.
"I don't care what Dumoulin says. He's being a bit cocky," Nibali said, speaking in rapid, staccato sentences. "But he needs to be careful – because if we let the others go up the road, he could lose his podium place, too. If you have to talk, talk when you're in Milan and you've won. He's strong, and he showed that by controlling things very well when we tried to attack him. He can't expect Quintana and me to chase down the riders in fourth and fifth place, otherwise, we might as well carry him in an armchair to Milan.
"I think he needs to keep riding and keep his feet on the ground. I have never been that cocky. He needs to talk less. Does he know what karma is? What goes around comes around…"
We're in a game of chess
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