The Giro had been waiting for Chris Froome, the master of the Tour, for years. Without him, Team Sky had been strung together sensational flops for five years in a row with the bankruptcy or unfortunate participations of the various Wiggins, Porte, Landa and Thomas. There was the entirely new location of Jerusalem as the starting point which made the Giro the first major stage race to take place on two continents.
There were (and are) all the conditions for the Giro which starts today from Jerusalem and which will stay in Israel for the first three stages to immediately make history. But there's no sport like cycling that loves hurting itself and self-flagellation. The facts are clear. Froome's return to the Giro was announced with great fanfare by the organizers in November at the presentation of the 2018 edition.
But the enthusiasm of Mario Vegni, the patron of the pink race, was immediately dampened when he learned a few days later that the four-time winner of the Tour had ended up under anti-doping investigation for double traces of salbutamol, which emerged in a check at the end of the seventh stage of the Vuelta. It was hoped that within a few months, in any case before the start of the Giro, the anti-doping tribunal would reach an acquittal or guilty sentence.
But evidently it was asking too much from the bureaucrats of the world pedal so much so that now there is talk of a decision that could even come after the Tour de France that Froome plans to race in July after the Giro also crossing Nibali and Quintana, the great absentees of this Tour.
An embarrassing situation to say the least: thousands of km await him with so many mythical climbs that have made the Giro and the Tour a legend, all to be run sub judice. Many – including Tom Dumoulin himself, winner of the 2017 Giro – argue that Froome would have done well to suspend himself, but the Briton convinced of his innocence did not want to give up and is ready for the pink adventure. And he's here to win it, as super favorite on the eve.
The Briton is aiming to make his third consecutive Grand Tour his own after his triumphs in the Tour and in the 2017 Vuelta, a winning streak only achieved in the past by the great Merckx. For Froome, however, this is not a debut at the Giro: in our parts he had already been there in his early twenties in 2009 and 2010, but they were impalpable presences, like a nobody: the first time he did not go beyond 32nd place , the following year he was even disqualified in the 19th stage for being towed by a motorbike.
Running with the sword of Damocles that everything he will do can be canceled by a retroactive sentence is not easy. Froome still tries to convey security and tranquility. He has always been at the center of rumors and suspicions about possible "helpers" for his very high watt blends, but until the last Vuelta he had never been caught outlawed.
Salbutamol is moreover a bronchodilator that Froome uses with a doctor's prescription to eradicate the asthma he is afflicted with. But if for a common mortal an excess of inhaled spray is just an overdose, for a cyclist it is doping. It doesn't matter if they aren't red stamped like growth hormone or epo, the forbidden red gold in the language of Lance Armstrong.
Inexplicable to say the least is that after eight months the case is still open, creating a dangerous vulnus in the full swing of the competitive season. Vegni has good reason to say that the Giro will keep faith with the outcome of the road. The reality is that in the event of disqualification, Froome would be deprived not only of the Vuelta won last year but also of any success in the Giro and even of what he will do in the next Tour.
Doping must be fought and eradicated but the long and increasingly postdated times of the sentences create endless uncertainties, confusion and controversies. Those that are setting the eve of this Giro on fire, which sees Tom Dumoulin, the last pink jersey in charge, and Fabio Aru as the only possible obstacles to the Briton's triumph.
The nightmare hovers that what happened to Contador in 2011 will repeat itself, a bizarre and unjust affair that cost the Spanish champion not only the victory in the 2010 Tour – and passes because it was the race in which the Pistolero was found positive for clenbutenol – but also that of the 2011 Giro where Contador, absolute ruler, was checked every day without ever being out of the norm.
After the Giro that year Contador also ran the Tour sub judice aiming for the fourth victory, but he faced it without the usual determination, with his head turned more than to the yellow jersey in Lausanne where the big names in cycling were about to pronounce the sentence on the his case. They handed him a two-year disqualification starting in July 2010: his Tour was awarded to Andy Schleck while the pink jersey won in Milan passed to Michele Scarponi.
And that anthem of Franco's Spain which was played by mistake to celebrate the useless victory of the Pistolero in Piazza del Duomo appeared to be a joke aside like the whole Giro. The risk that with Froome this sporting antics will be repeated is high. That's why the whole Giro, not just Froome, starts sub judice even though Jerusalem is celebrating the first time of the pink race in the Promised Land.
