After a completely opaque Sanremo he had almost lost track of himself. More than racing, Mark Cavendish, the king of the sprint, dedicated himself to being a dad for the first time, waiting and then looking after little Delilah Grace from his partner, the beautiful model Peta Todd. He had made an appointment for all of them at the Giro. And he was true. At the first opportunity, after a few stretches in the final of the Saxo Bank men who were racing at home, the twenty-six-year-old world champion, in the splendor of his rainbow jersey, came back to success, fist raised to the sky, at the finish line of the second Danish stage of the I ride, 260km into the wind, mostly flat as a pool table, from Herning to Herning; a sumptuous sprint preceded by the thrill of a crash which involved quite a few riders at the last corner before the straight to finish.
A tailor-made stage to enhance the propulsive force of the British sprinter, a stage from which no jolt to the standings was expected, which always sees the American Taylor Phinney in first place. A pink jersey so excited as to admit at the start, in perfect Italian learned in the three years spent in Marostica, that he hadn't been able to sleep for the joy of the feat achieved, the third Yankee to wear the symbol of supremacy after Hampsten (winner of the Giro 1988) and Vandevelde. Taylor's seemed to be a routine defense of the pink jersey when, 8 kilometers from the finish, a jump in the chain forced the Bmc athlete, who stopped for about thirty seconds, to make a furious run-up to get back into the group, helped by three team mates and his natural vocation as a track champion pistard.
It was this performance, in addition to the sprint by Cavendish, new red jersey in the points classification, the only technical note worthy of being remembered in a stage characterized by an initial flight of unpretentious riders who will go down in the annals of the Giro only for having led the tadpoles, in the wind of the Jutland peninsula, at the closest point to the North Pole ever reached by a major stage race. For Cavendish, who preceded Matthew Goss and the Frenchman Soupe, it is the eighth stage victory in the Giro. The three Danish days will end with the third stage, from Horsens to Horsens: another 190km for the sprinters' festival. Fraction that will be dedicated to the memory of Wouters Weylandt, the Belgian who died on 9 May last year, in the descent of Passo del Bocco and of the mayor of Horsens, Jan Trojborg, who died in the morning of a heart attack while participating in a ride waiting for the Tour. In the evening, the caravan's transfer by plane to Verona will begin, where on Wednesday, the first act on Italian soil, there will be the eagerly awaited test of the team time trial.
