The Giro, full of bandages and wounds, set off again for Foligno making the bitter count of broken ribs and broken femurs on the roads that led it to Montecassino. Too many increasingly disastrous falls on roads with worn and patched asphalts are decimating a race that looks so much like an Altman masterpiece from many years ago with the strange title "Don't they kill horses like this?". In the film, the dancers were exhausted and forced to dance without interruption. In the Giro it is the cyclists who have to do the tightrope in the face of the continuous succession of roundabouts and traffic reservations placed on roads as slippery as soap bars. Also yesterday near Foligno another crush with Ventoso, a Spaniard from Movistar, who ended up against the barriers with his bones plagued while spinning at over 50 km per hour. The withdrawal list is growing day by day. Even Michele Scarponi might not leave today.
The Gazzetta that organizes the Giro, after the general massacre of Montecassino, has also accused the new highly technological materials that would make the brakes less efficient. Anger, disappointment, and above all pain because falls hurt, even if runners have a stamina like few others. He proved it, to cite a case of a too unlucky champion this year, Joaquim Rodriguez who had come to the Giro to win it even though he had two cracked ribs after crashing in the Ardennes classics. In the general carom the other day, Purito was thrown off his bike and broke a finger and a third rib. Dazed and suffering, he tried to save his Giro by attempting the impossible. Distraught by pain and fatigue, the Spaniard still wanted to finish the stage before retiring. With these scenes in my eyes and in my mind, under a rain that, like Fantozzi's cloud, seems to haunt the Giro, the peloton pedaled reluctantly towards Foligno.
Only in the final stages did the teams of sprinters still in the race start pulling to reach a group of courageous fleeing. Cannondale, Viviani's team, and Giant Shimano which after losing Kittel are betting on Mezgec, took the lion's share. But once the five fugitives were reached, three km from the finish line, it was the Frenchman Nacer Bouhanni, a true juggler in the narrow and convulsive spaces of the sprints, who gave the winning kick, an encore after the success in Bari which confirms the young transalpine as the best sprint still in contention at the Giro. Second Nizzolo, third Mezgec. Obviously unchanged ranking with two Australians always in the first places: the ever more surprising Michael Matthews who also disputed the sprint yesterday in the pink jersey finishing fourth and, second to a handful of seconds, Cadel Evans who after the coup in Montecassino dominates from above all other rivals for the final victory, especially Quintana and Uran. The two Colombians who today could be planning a counter-offensive on a route designed to enhance their qualities as pure climbers: you arrive in Montecopiolo with a final ascent of 18km at 5% after climbing Carpegna, the mountain on which they trained Marco Pantani. A real stage also for the renewed ambitions of Evans who, however, could also become the new pink jersey.
