The 101st Giro d’Italia was one for the ages. A broiling swell of pre-race controversy and dramatic racing swept the Giro from Jerusalem to the Italian Peninsular by way of Sicily, coalescing into a tempest of apocalyptic proportion unleashed upon the slopes of the Colle delle Finestre.
Pre-race favourite and defending champion Tom Dumoulin took the maglia rosa on the opening day time-trial in the Holy City but eagerly surrendered the responsibility of leading the race. First to the now disgraced Rohan Dennis, and then to Team Mitchelton-Scott, who seized the Giro by the scruff of its ruff with a trio of stage wins for Simon Yates across the mountainous landscape of the land of all bliss.
Ahead of stage 18, the race had settled into something resembling a steady rhythm, with Yates dominant in pink, Dumoulin consistently there or thereabouts and Chris Froome, shockingly, almost 4 minutes down on the race lead. With a final surge on the massive slopes of Prato Nevoso, the first chinks in Yates’ armour were revealed, as the Brit was beaten to the summit by 24 seconds by Dumoulin and Froome.
And so we come to it, the great battle of our time. Stage 19, it's profile dominated by the looming sight of the fearsome snow-clad slopes of the Colle Delle Finestre. The night before this day of days, Chad Haga consulted the crystal ball otherwise known as teammate Tom Dumoulin, who offered the prediction: ‘Sky will blow the race up on Finestre, someone will crack. It could be me, it could be Yates, it could be Froome. But they are sure to try.’ The defending champion, it transpires, knows a thing or two about cycling. What followed ‘simply defied logic’, according to Haga.
Team Sky hit the bottom of the Finestre, and tore the race apart. Yates slipped almost inexorably backwards, as rider after rider in turquoise and white peeled off, raising the temperature of the racing as the Giro climbed further into the bleak, windswept sphere of the Gods. With 80km to go, as the remainder of the GC group clung on by their very fingernails, Froome unleashed a thunderous hammer blow, shattering the delicate balance of the race across the Alpine landscape. It was an unanswerable assault, and by the time Froome took the Cima Coppi atop the mighty Finestre, he had 15 minutes on the maglia rosa, and 38 seconds on Dumoulin.
Simon Yates, who seemed destined for Giro glory mere hours prior, had been stupefied by the sheer grit and determination of what Froome described to us as ‘a pretty long shot, literally... but on that day, it was the right set of circumstances, the perfect storm.’ A madman’s plan, but one which, with total commitment, had been executed to perfection. By the time Froome rolled across the line in Bardoneccia, punching the air in victory, a champion gladiator saluting the baying coliseum crowd, he had a three-minute advantage on Carapaz (the next best placed rider on the road), almost forty minutes on the broken form of Yates, and was in the maglia rosa by forty seconds.
After one of the greatest comebacks in the sport's modern history, all that was left for Froome was to tie up the GC on stage 20. It wasn’t quite a done deal, as forty seconds was far from insurmountable for Dumoulin, but Froome held off the defending champion, thoroughly deserving of his victory laurels and the adulation of the Roman crowd.
The Giro d’Italia began a year of British dominance at Grand Tours, as teammate Geraint Thomas would collect his first and only maillot jaune, and Simon Yates would bounce back in Spain to win the Vuelta. Chris was kind enough to pen an In the Winners’ Words piece for our inaugural edition in 2018, discussing the Giro, a race which, interestingly enough, he doesn’t consider his greatest Grand Tour victory, merely his ‘most ingenious.’ Respectfully Chris, we might have to disagree.
If you want to make your own mind up, and fill in all the little details we’ve missed out (turns out there is a lot to cram in) then pick up a copy of The Road Book 2018 in our upcoming Spring Sale.
It includes interviews with Chris Froome alongside teammate and Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas, not to mention the definitive record of the year’s racing and essays covering the entire scope of possibly British cycling’s finest hour.
As a little teaser, we’ve made the contributions of Chris Froome and Chad Haga available for free alongside our stage-by-stage breakdown of the Giro d’Italia in a handy little PDF guide which you can access here.
We’ll leave you with the words of our editor, Ned Boulting, describing his love for this bizarrely brilliant sport:
‘This was an extraordinary year. But in that regard, it was quite normal. For every year of road racing seems exceptional, for better or worse.’
Check back next week as we take a look at our favourite race of 2019.
