Great popular celebration but also anger, emotion and surprise: there is a bit of everything on the day of the debut of the 100th Giro, also celebrated by Google with a "doodle" dedicated to the pink race and also greeted by Fabio Aru, the home champion who reluctantly had to forfeit due to health problems. The worst feelings are all contained in the word doping which on the eve made the murky ghosts of resorting to the forbidden pharmacy hover over the race again, a recidivism that is hard to extinguish which led to the expulsion from the start-list of the two Bardiani-Csf riders , Stefano Pirazzi and Nicola Ruffoni. The most beautiful feelings are those gathered in the minute of silence that in Alghero, before the start of the stage, the caravan of the Giro, with its Astana teammates lined up in the front row, dedicated amidst tears and applause to Michele Scarponi. The surprise came at the end of the day with an outcome that surprised everyone, bookmakers first and foremost.
The Giro, which scattered mountains almost everywhere trusting in a spectacular duel between Quintana and Nibali, offered the sprinters six stages to show off the best of sprinting: and yesterday's, from Alghero to Olbia, was one of them. It wasn't flat like a billiard but his ups and downs didn't scare even the most reluctant to climb. But the big names in the sprint, which in this Giro – absent Sagan, Cavendish, Kittel, Degenkolb and Bouhanni – are André Greipel, Fernando Gaviria and Caleb Ewan, were sensationally mocked by Lukas Postlberger who gave himself and all of Austria the first victory in the Giro and the first pink jersey. A success that surprised everyone, including Postlberger himself. In the last kilometer of the race, in the winding town of Olbia, the Austrian had set off wide only with the intention of catching the sprint on his fastest team mate in Bora-Hansgrohe, the Irishman Sam Bennett when, thanks to the last bends at elbow, a hole has opened between him and the group. Mezgec, who was preparing Ewan's sprint, was unable to cancel it. Of Bennett there was no longer a shadow.
The order to go full steam ahead came from the flagship of the Bora and the descendant of the Habsburgs, inventing himself as a finisseur, managed to cross the finish line with his hands up. Behind him, at the same time, the Australian Ewan had to be satisfied with winning the sprint of the disappointed ones ahead of Greipel. Gaviria remained in the thick of the group finishing 13th. The first of the Italians was Nizzolo, fourth. For Bora-Hansgrohe, Peter Sagan's German team, a day of hoarding shirts. In addition to the pink one on Postlberger's shoulders, there is also the blue one of leader of the climbers, conquered by Cesare Benedetti passing first on the two Gpm of the day of the Giro, the Multeddu and the Trinità d'Agultu. Second stage today, the first of eight classified as medium mountain, almost entirely in the Sardinian hinterland. From the departure from Olbia, already the site of two stages in 1991, won by the Spanish Casado and by Bugno) up to the finish line in Tortoli it is a continuous ups and downs with two Gpm, the first in Nuoro and the second at over a thousand meters of Passo di Genna Silana 20 km from the finish. A long descent from Gennargentu which induces bookmakers to bet again on the sprinters as possible winners of the stage with Gaviria given at 4,50 and Ewan and Greipel at 5,50. But given what happened yesterday with Postlberger, the victory of an unlisted rider is super popular – 4,50 on a par with Gaviria.
