Stage 19: Marano Lagunare to Santuario di Castelmonte

Dutchman in Blue! …

Koen Bouwman was the winner in the mountains – the second stage victory in this year’s Giro – and also now with an unassailable lead in the King of the Mountains Maglia Azzura competition, the first Dutchman to achieve it in the history of the Giro d’Italia. Vallserberg is the highest point in the Netherlands at 323 metres above sea level. Tomorrow’s stage includes approx. 15.5 times more climbing than that!

Oops! It’s that tricky last corner on Stage 19

… Italian in Pink?

Bouwman emerged the stage winner from the bunch of five who played cat-and-mouse over the last few kilometres of the final climb. It was only decided on the last bend when Italian Vendrame was shoved off the road and ended up tangled in pink bunting. The Guardian reported a bunting shortage this morning, which would be ironic reading for the rider who could have been the fastest finisher of the five contenders.

So don’t panic, Pozzovivo did not achieve an extraordinary comeback to overhaul the leading 3 on GC. Instead Carapaz, Hindley and Landa cancelled each other out a few minutes behind the winner. It will all be down to the last mountains and a time trial. Brilliant race!

Team of the Day

Mauro Schmid of Quickstep was second on the stage, which was great news for Callan’s Probabiliter tandem iterum who also include Jai Hindley in 9th place:

Probabiliter Tandem Iterum (“Probably Last Again”?) have now climbed into the top half of the league table at 6th

Bye bye, Richie

Although none of us selected Richie Porte, many of us will be sad to see Richie Porte leave the race. While the commentators seem obsessed with what it might mean for Captain Carapaz to lose his Trusty Lieutenant in the mountains, I thought it was more important to mention that this was Porte’s last grand tour. So it is especially disappointing that he couldn’t finish it, and possibly celebrate the win with Ineos Bombchuckers. A bout of gastro-enteritis has sent him home, which is yet more bad luck for the Aussie who has shepherded Wiggins, Froome and Carapaz to grand tour victories, while so often falling short himself. He has had nasty crashes and cruel mechanicals and, when he last rode the Giro in 2015 as one of the favourites, he was docked 2 minutes for accepting help from a fellow countryman on another team. But who wouldn’t want to help such a Nice Guy who so reliably turns himself inside-out for others?

Flag of the Day

There were plenty of these being waved on the slopes of the Kolovrat as the Giro dipped into Slovenia in the middle of Stage 19. Many of these handsome flags were oversize and on the end of long poles, at least one of which nearly took the pink jersey’s helmet off. Fortunately a diplomatic incident between Slovenia and Ecuador was narrowly averted. I had always assumed that the white-blue-red horizontal stripes derived from the flag of Russia, but that’s not the case: the colours come from the Duchy of Carniola which was part of the Holy Roman Empire (famously “not holy, roman nor an empire”!) under the Habsburgs. Well, well – who knew?

The scenery on both sides of the Slovenian-Italian border was stunningly beautiful: As Cycling Weakly put it, “the stuff of desktop screensaver heaven”.

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