Rome was not built in ten days. But in ten days you can scare all your rivals and leave half the platoon trembling. Those ten days of competition, few, have been enough for Tadej Pogacar to instill fear at the start of the 107th Giro d’Italia.
In the surroundings of Turin, like that movie of a life that is seen just before dying, images of the attack that he carried out with 80 kilometers left to win the Strade Bianche alone run through the heads of many of the candidates, how he said goodbye to the rest in La Redoute, 38 from Liège, to win the Ardennes monument, or the 29 km ride through the Berguedà passes to conclude his third stage in the Volta (later would come the fourth and general). But this time few doubt that these visions are not a summary, but that they are really anticipating what will happen on the way to Rome, on May 26.
With that background, with a Pogacar that is presumed to be so superior, there will be two races in one, it’s time to dust off the record book. If anything seems obvious, it is that it will be a superlative pink corsa, nothing to do with the minimal, minuscule differences of the latest editions. Everything indicates that the pink jersey this time will not be a matter of seconds, but of several minutes. Nibali won with almost five in 2013. Basso bordered on 10 minutes in 2006.
Pogacar does not intimidate, it scares. And the Italians, who tend towards grandiloquence, start counting how many of the 21 stages they can complete in three weeks. Two every seven days? Three a week? Exaggerated? It’s possible. Feasible? Also.
Before Merckx and even before Coppi and Bartali, there was Alfredo Binda. Almost a century ago, in 1930, the organizers of the Giro paid Binda in advance the equivalent of the prize of the pink jersey and a few stages so that he would not participate in the race, which lacked excitement and rivalry. . Binda, who was nicknamed La Gioconda for his elegance and permanent smile, had been able to win 12 stages of the 15 that included the 1927 edition. And in 1929 he won eight days in a row. This is how some imagine Pogacar in this Giro.
The Slovenian looks at the route and only sees stages that suit him wonderfully, with constant opportunities to leave his mark. There are seven high finishes plus the penultimate day with the double pass through Mount Grappa and 70 km divided into two time trials, one in Perugia with the last six uphill, and another flat one along Lake Garda, in addition to the sterrato on the sixth day . And the festival will not be long in coming. You can start this first weekend. Today, in Turin with the Superga, the Maddalena and San Vito. Tomorrow, at the arrival at the Oropa sanctuary, where Ugrumov put Indurain on the ropes and Pantani overtook the entire platoon after a breakdown.
The 25-year-old leader of the UAE, who to date has been on the podium of the five major events in which he has participated, aims to overturn all the pre-established mental frameworks in cycling. For this reason, he made a move in the remote chess game he plays with Vingegaard, who defeated him in the last two months of July, and signed up for the Giro before the Tour. If he gets the pink jersey, he will be able to aspire in the French round – which by the way starts in Florence – for the double that no one has done since the ill-fated Marco Pantani in 1998.
The Italian climber achieved it in a very pirate way, in keeping with his nickname and the bandana he tied around his head. He was covered in both races until he launched himself to tackle the leaders of Zülle first, in Italy, and then Ullrich, in France. Pantani, despite his incomparable pace in the mountains, only won two stages in each event, but took home the big spoils. Now, with Vingegaard convalescing and being a mystery for the Tour, to enter the story, Pogacar must decide whether to be the Pirate, selective and surgical to save strength for the second duel, or to be La Gioconda and destroy everything like Binda and he has done himself in his only ten days of competition before the Giro.
