Christopher Froome had an empty box – that of the Giro – in his palmarès of victories to join the select club of riders who have won the three big stage races on the cycling calendar. Mission accomplished even if today's catwalk at the Imperial Forums in Rome is still officially missing at the end of the Giro. Froome, having repulsed Tom Dumoulin's last attempts to detach him on the long final climb of Cervinia without great efforts, has in fact also put his brand name on the pink race which joins the 4 Tours and Vuelta already won. A treble before him achieved only by six great pedal of each era: Anquetil, Gimondi, Merckx, Hinault, Contador and Nibali. Not only that, Froome can also boast of having triumphed consecutively in the Tour, Vuelta and Giro, a crazy streak in the space of just, as only Merckx and Hinault managed to do in their golden age. A very great, this British born in Kenya and raised in South Africa, who in this Giro, first with the solo on the Zoncolan and then with the legendary escape taken on the dirt road of Colle delle Finestre, showed a heart and courage that thrilled even those who up to now considered him only a perfect calculator, a sort of robot on the pedals who won thanks to a formidable team that anesthetized each stage. Today is the day of his triumph, the most suffered as he himself admitted wearing the pink jersey for the first time, which for the first time ends up on the shoulders of a British. And it is a bit of a constant of the Giros finished in Rome, four in all, to see new flags on the highest podium: in 2009 it was the Russian one that waved, welcoming the success of Denis Menchov, 68 years ago it was the Swiss Hugo Koblet who triumphed , first foreigner in the squad, ahead of Gino Bartali by more than 5 minutes. It was the 1950 Giro, that of Fausto Coppi's crash in Primolano.
At the departure from Susa for the last mountain stage in the caravan there was a lot of tiredness and a lot of resignation. Froome's blow had left its mark. The classification, with a delay of just 40”, only gave Dumoulin any chance to attempt an impossible mission. By now the race had found its natural master, the stronger one, used to grand tours, who in the decisive third week of the race finds strength that others no longer have. Dumoulin proved to be his most tenacious rival, trying right up to the last minute to detach Froome, but in the end also in Cervinia he had to give up a handful of seconds, six to be exact, to the winner of the Giro, who now distances him by 46 ”. Simon Yates knows how much the third week of racing weighs on the legs of the riders, who only dreamed of being able to win the Giro up to Iseo and who in the three Alpine stages saw him fall into the abyss of an irreparable physical crisis. After a 38-minute delay in Jafferau, yesterday the former pink jersey – the absolute protagonist of the first two weeks of the race – arrived more than 45 minutes behind the winner, his teammate, the Spaniard Mikel Nieve. Thus Yates finished the Giro in 22nd place, over an hour and a quarter behind Froome. Even Thibaut Pinot will not be able to finish the Giro, who started from Susa third and therefore on the podium, and literally exploded on the second hill of the stage, the Saint Pantaléon. His stage was an ordeal, in the throes of an intestinal infection the Frenchman managed to get to Cervinia, so upset and vomiting as soon as he got off his bike that he was hospitalized in Aosta. He bitterly leaves the podium to Miguel Angel Lopez, third and white jersey of the first of the youngsters, closely followed by the Ecuadorian Ricard Carapaz. First of the Italians is Pozzovivo, fifth at 8'03” from Froome, back in the top five after Pinot's surrender.
