What a fantastic day’s racing! And watching the Diesel of Thomas de Gendt holding off the chasing Ferrari of Mattieu van der Poel was thrilling right to the last kilometre. The GCN commentary compared the course around Naples as a “mini World Championship” but there was a lot more interest than a one-day race, with…

Unlucky for some Friday 13th was unlucky for Michael Mørkøv, Mark Cavendish’s missile launcher, as he had a feverish night and has left the race. That’s bad news for Cav, but on the plus side, a Hungarian village has announced that it is going to name a bus stop after him! Yes the big story…

It was a good day for the Calabrian Tourist Board, for there was not a lot to look for much of the day except stunningly beautiful scenery. I now know that Calabria has a famous sheep’s cheese, Caclocavallo which is now on my wish list, and that Calabria – the toe of the “boot” of…

The Start and Finish towns today have associations with noted Italian physicists. Catania was the birthplace of Ettore Majorana, whose theoretical work on fundamental particles gave us Majorana Fermions which are particles that are their own anti-particle. Messina however is the home town of Vincenzo Nibali whose well-publicised experimental work on dynamics in Spain in…

On and on and up and up. There was officially 25 km to climb but it was really 40+ km. And the slopes of Mount Etna did a bit of sifting out even before the trees gave way to lava. The long ascent proved too much for Nibali, Dumoulin and Pozzovivo. Matty van der Poel…