What did you think of this year’s Giro d’Italia? That’s the prominent question I’ve seen flying around over the last few days, ever since Team Sky’s and Chris Froome’s resurrection on stage 19.
Well, I watched stage 19 from Venaria Reale to Bardonecchia. I sat for hours, followed intently, and noted all the faults and tactical errors made in the pursuit of Chris Froome during his 80-kilometre solo attack, and when it was all done and dusted on Friday evening, I was left scratching my head. In fact, I’m still struggling to make coherent sense of what occurred.
That night I heard the question, ‘What do you think of the ride Chris Froome has done today?’ being posed to Sean Kelly, and his reply was the one that summed it up: “Unbelievable.”
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He didn’t say amazing, or predictable, or unsurprising. No, it was ‘unbelievable’. And that sums up quite eloquently what happened. Describing an event as unbelievable becomes the only tangible way to summarise something you can’t understand, something that defies logic and has experts such as proven race winners and former pros searching for a semblance of reality. It was unbelievable.
To bring in some context, we need to take a look at the race as a whole. Froome's Giro began with a fall in Jerusalem and was followed by iffy form and calls from ex-riders like Alberto Contador for the Team Sky leader to abandon ship and concentrate on the Tour de France. As a rider, when you hear such talk you know that things are dire. That’s because Contador raced with Froome, and he knows the signs, sees the grimaces, recognises the tormented hollow face we all saw after a few of the mountain finishes, and his conclusion was that the Giro was over for his former rival. We all thought Froome would take note.
It wasn’t just Team Sky’s leader who appeared to be struggling; none of his teammates were remarkable, either. But when the race hit the Zoncolan on stage 14 we saw the return of the manic twiddling of a tiny gear from Froome as he rode away from the strongest guys in the race. Up until then we’d seen Froome’s high cadence but it had only been matched by his consistency with going backwards. From nowhere, all that changed on the hardest climb of the race, and even the revelation of this Giro, Simon Yates couldn't close the gap. That performance was slightly believable because as a rider you can hurt yourself over and above the norm with a big effort but you pay over the next days, and that's exactly what happened on the stage to Sappada. Froome was human again and suffering from what was, in every rider’s words, a brutal race.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/philippa-york-chris-froome-and-trying-to-understand-the-unbelievable
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