When the super favorite of the day before wins it, the Giro usually doesn't offer great emotions. But if the super favorite does everything to lose it by gaining it in extremis, victory in the pink race is no longer a given but acquires the extraordinary flavor of the enterprise. And his second Giro Vincenzo Nibali won it propnezol'he won just like that, Vincenzo Nibali like the boxer everyone is betting on who falters until he risks throwing the sponge but who in the end finds the kappao blow again.
If Risoul was the resurrection of the champion after difficult days, Sant'Anna di Vinadio was the apotheosis, the seal of a masterpiece. Two Giri, one Tour, one Vuelta: the Shark enriches his roll of honor which places him at the top of world cycling of every era. A success in which no one believed anymore, perhaps not even him, as he declared after his arrival between two wings of a delirious crowd. Strongest of all on the climb when he sprints on the Col della Lombarda, at the top of which he passes with 56" on Chaves, the pink jersey the Shark felt more and more worn on the long descent before the final ascent of Sant'Anna di Vinadio, a dive on a narrow and exposed road like an old mule track now paved that NIbali tackled at a breakneck pace, drawing thrilling trajectories, without ever ceasing to pedal.
A show that recalled champions of the past such as Koblet and Magni, who had no rivals in the downhill. Esteban Chaves, who set his sights on winning the Tour but who after the primacy conquered in Risoul had also immediately put the Giro in his immediate objectives, defended himself courageously, but against NIbali in the last two days there is no been nothing to do. When the Shark took off 4 and a half km from the Lombarda brow, Chaves, an excellent grimpeur, gave way on his favorite terrain. Downhill the Colombian who two years ago saw death in the face for a fall at the Laigiueglia Trophy, felt like risking more than the lawful putting his life at risk again.
Waiting for him were his parents with his mother in a pink shirt. But it was not their Hummingbird but Nibali who first embraced them as a winner, a gesture immortalized by the lenses that went around the world, a scene that only cycling in the simple humanity of its heroes can offer. Chaves arrived 1'36 after NIbali. He had lost the Giro by 52”. In Turin he will get on the podium today as second filing a Giro to be framed. The Dutchman Steven Krujiswjick will not get on the podium, as he was unable to defend third place from the onslaught of Alejandro Valverde, author of a stage tackled with the usual grit and generosity that saw him finish seventh at 13” from Nibali…Krujiswijck in the end repeats the result of the 2015 Giro despite having put on a show in the Dolomites so much that he gives the impression of being the master by now, despite not having much help from the team.
His pink fairytale was cut short by the dramatic carambola in the Colle dell'Agnello descent which practically cost him the Giro and a mini-fracture to a rib which yesterday limited him in the last battle in the Alps, which saw the success of stage of the Estonian Rein Taaramae.
