Things happen in the Giro of the very modern Tadej Pogacar and at the same time very ancient stories are unearthed, such as that of Ernesto Colnago (Cambiago, Milan, 92 years old), who started working at the age of 12 in a welding workshop thanks to his father, a farmer , he gave two bags of corn flour to the owner so that he would admit him as an apprentice; A year later he falsified his birth date to start welding bicycles in a Milan factory. Some time later, he fixed the connecting rods for Fiorenzo Magni, who complained of pain in his legs because they were poorly adjusted, and who hired him as a mechanic when he saw that they no longer hurt. In 1957, Ernesto built his first frame for Gastón Nencini, who won the Giro with that bicycle. Then the brand was born with his last name and many victories, many champions.
In the 1995 Giro, Colnago appeared at the start of the second stage, a time trial between Foligno and Assisi, to hand Tony Rominger the machine they had designed for that day. It was raining. The Swiss won, almost at the same time that his friend Michael Schumacher won the Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix. He did not take off his jersey in the entire Giro except to get into bed.
In Foligno, where Ernesto Colnago visited Rominger’s Mapei, the first time trial of the Giro 2024 began. They are no longer like before. “It’s the longest I’ve ever run,” said American Magnus Sheffield. “I had been thinking about her for months.” Nothing to do with those that Rominger disputed three decades ago. Pogacar, like the 1995 winner, also rides a Colnago, much more evolved than the one that had served to break the hour record. Furthermore, like the Swiss, he dressed in pink on the second day and doesn’t seem to be going downhill until the end.
Because until Foligno, Geraint Thomas was the alternative, the cyclist who knows more about being old than being a devil, but the insulting youth of Tadej Pogacar is not deterred by the Welshman’s experience, nor by the power of his team, Ineos, which seemed have everything ready to inoculate the antidote to the Giro and minimize the impact of the race leader. His plans included, at least, achieving the stage victory with the super specialist Filippo Ganna, the man destined to set the benchmarks for the rest of the riders in his squad, who, in fact, achieved very interesting times.
But they didn’t count, or they did, but they hid it very well, with the Pogacar factor, a phenomenon on the bicycle, which came out last, after so many discussions, with a two-color integral jumpsuit, the one that the organization initially proposed. and turned the UCI’s nose upside down.
⏱️✅ !
He improves Ganna’s time by 17 seconds and gains 2 minutes on Geraint Thomas, one of his main rivals in the general standings.#GirodItalia | #LaCasadelCiclismo pic.twitter.com/UOwhyhoyXZ
— Eurosport.es (@Eurosport_ES) May 10, 2024
In the first section, everything seemed to fit into the Ineos Excel sheet. Ganna swept, Tadej passed, at kilometer 18, 44 seconds behind the Italian champion, and Geraint Thomas, 52 seconds behind, a reasonable distance from the leader. Also in the second, the leader seemed human, although while his gap with Thomas increased to 40 seconds, the gap he maintained with Ganna only rose to 47.
But that’s when Pogacar plugged in the meat grinder. The race was uphill, literally, for him and for the others, and also metaphorically for Thomas, the candidate, who with his only 66-tooth chainring suffered when the terrain became 13% uneven. The Slovenian descended to a more bearable development and began to destroy with a happy pedaling, like his character.
In the final kilometers, on the way to the finish line in Perugia, the city where Rominger began his recital, he overcame the differences with Ganna, who was watching the champion in disbelief from the provisional winner’s hot seat. In the last kilometer it was already clear who was the best. When he raised his arm at the finish line, his difference was 17 seconds over Ganna, and two minutes over Thomas, who finished tenth in the stage and is third overall, 2.46m away, where the Colombian Daniel Felipe Martínez advance in ten seconds. The Giro is beginning to have, almost definitively, the color that Pogacar wants to give it. In Saturday’s stage, in the final ascent to Prato di Tivo, first category, at 1,450 meters of altitude, he can begin to make his statement. Nobody expects anything else.
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