Oh For Goodness’ Sake! I had just hit send on an e-mail mentioning my optimism about Joao Almeida doing well in the time-trial on Sunday, and moments later learned than he has abandoned before the start of Stage 18! (That’s knocked one more off six of our fantasy teams.) Then when a small break had…

And another completely enthralling day in the giro, with attacks and gains and losses and heroics – I love it! There was an audacious attack by Van der Poel who tried to out-van-Aert van Aert as a big man going for a mountain stage, but his Fantasy Cycling had to bow to some wonderful young…

Dolomite Triumph WARNING: THIS EPISODE MAY CONTAIN REFERENCES TO MOUNT EVEREST, PINEAPPLES AND INVERTEBRATE HOSIERY 5250 metres ascent today is why this stage was marked as a “five stars”, most likely to be important for the GC. With more mountains tomorrow, someone has worked out that they climb higher than Sagarmatha (a.k.a. Mt. Everest). It…

Cogne appears to be famous for iron ore, cross-country skiing and child murder. So let’s talk about the cycling for a change. There was a general truce in the GC after yesterday’s fireworks, except for Guillaume Martin who seems to specialise in losing a few minutes or gaining a few minutes on alternate days. But…

Bora Hansgrohe lit the touch paper on Saturday’s stage and the GC fireworks started. There was fighting for the front group all the way, with Ineos Grenadiers holding the matches. Then when Carapaz got the chance he rocketed ahead which burned up Lopez in pink – what a great 10 days he has made honouring…

Catching a break … Just a fairly flat stage with a couple of lower tier teams sending a rider into the break to make it an easy slowish cruise in with a comfortable catch and bunch sprint. That was the script. However none of that happened on Stage 13, with four strong riders working together…

Shortest longest and lowest Luigi Ganna was the winner of the first Giro d’Italia in 1909 which featured Geno(v)a, the city for today’s finale. When he and the other 48 survivors had finished the race in Turin, they had completed 8 stages, averaging >300 km each, the shortest of which was longer (206 km) than…

Two corks and a parrot When I hit “Publish” on yesterday’s blog post (Stage 10: Pescara to Jesi – GreenWightRed) I was unaware of the podium drama that led to yesterday’s magnificent winner Biniam Girmay leaving the race today, and I had somehow also missed the parrot. Now we know that cycling is a dangerous…

A moment of sporting history and a moment of heart-bursting good sportsmanship and respect. Mattieu Van der Poel was outsprinted by the brilliant 22 year-old Eritrean Biniam Girmay, and had the good grace to acknowledge it with a thumbs up and warm congratulations. I think whatever else happens in this race, that is what many…

Just 5 km today, but vertical rather than horizontal. Stage 9 was fascinating from start to finish, and produced the expected shake up in GC. Those slipping out of contention on the final climb included Simon Yates and Guilio Ciconne. The young pink jersey holder Lopez battled to keep it into the second week, despite…