Heaven, sang David Byrne, is a place where nothing ever happens. The Giro d’Italia may be, as RCS Sport have long insisted on telling us, the toughest race in the world’s most beautiful place, but there are no terrestrial paradises on offer for the men with designs on final overall victory: anything can happen on any given day, and it usually does.
When the Giro d'Italia route was unveiled in Milan last October, some voiced concerns that the relatively flat beginning to the race would make for a monotonous opening ten days before the event truly ignited in the Alps. Such thoughts seem absurd following the fraught finale to stage 4 in Frascati, where Tom Dumoulin’s overall challenge already seems doomed after he came down in a mass crash with 6 kilometres remaining and conceded more than four minutes to maglia rosa Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma).
The Giro in the modern era is relentless. At the start of stage 4 in Orbetello, Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb) told Cyclingnews that an opening week bereft of mountain stages was “easy physically but mentally not so easy.” The problem, he continued, was that “right now, everybody thinks he can still win, so it’s pretty nervous in the bunch.”
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Those words would seem cruelly prescient a little over six hours later. Dumoulin, as he has been all week, was posited towards the head of the peloton on the run-in to Frascati, but he was powerless to avoid hitting the ground when Salvatore Puccio (Team Ineos) crashed a couple of places in front of him.
Although Dumoulin remounted and gave forlorn chase, he came home more than four minutes down and now lies 56th overall, some 4:30 behind Roglic. The Giro has seen some startling late turnarounds in recent years, but it seems fanciful to imagine that Dumoulin will join their number.
“The rankings are over,” Dumoulin said afterwards, and it now remains to be seen if he will continue in the race at all. Although he sustained no fractures in the crash, he was left with swollen and bloodied knees and appeared in considerable distress on crossing the line in Frascati.
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You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/giro-ditalia-gc-analysis-anything-can-happen-and-it-usually-does
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