If the road had never stopped and the Giro d’Italia number 104 began as finished the last one, just six months ago, that is with the Martian Filippo Ganna in triumph in the time trial of Milan, this novel to be written would already have its bearded Gascon hero, ready to push the fatigue a little further. But the legs can’t always be 100 percent, especially in an Olympic season, with so many goals in the crosshairs. I really hope not to disappoint anyone: take the first pink jersey would be important.
Raised 150 km from here, on the Verbano heights, Ganna l ‘country child called to devour the 8600 meters of a flat and fast time trial, that launches the Giro dal Piemonte towards an Italy that sees the end of the long one tunnel of the pandemic and wants to celebrate, with distancing and a mask, the effort of 184 thin and courageous souls, an itinerant outpost of the return to normalcy that we all desire. Cycling for 21 stages, away from Nutella and from temptations, cutting the air with his nose: the life that Filippo chose as a child, preferring it to the canoe of his father Marco, an Olympic blue Los Angeles ’84 Games, already the damnation from which he hoped to stay away.
I like to think I’m a normal guy, okay I won the World Championship but my job, I’m a cyclist and I try to go fast, that’s all. For expectations they do not discount and Ganna, extraordinary protagonist of the October 2020 Giro postponed by the health emergency at the wheel of the world champion gold of Imola, the man to beat. Scatter from Piazza Castello at 4.53 pm immediately after the mysterious object Remco Evenepoel, riding the new Pinarello that he wanted flamboyant and special (I asked for a bike capable of astonishing, which does not go unnoticed, with pink touches to remember the time trial last year in Palermo), in the lead the mission to disconnect in the arc of a dozen minutes Almeida, Cavagna and the baby Merckx, the Deceunick trio who will try to displease the grenadier (193 cm) of Captain Bernal’s Ineos. A good start would be important: the pink jersey is a symbol recognized all over the world.
The memory of himself, that poker of mauled stages in the role of wingman of Tao Geoghegan Hart (hijacked on the Tour) plus the ancient sensations of a child enchanted on the asphalt by the movement of air of the passing group (The Giro the race I dreamed of running as a child, when I came home from school in a hurry to get in front of the TV, or when dad took me to the street to wait for Bettini), it could be the fuel that Filippo has been chasing for a while in this season which started well in February, with two successes at Etoile de Bessges and in the test against time in the desert dell’Uae Tour, then suddenly uphill: the over a year long unbeatable defeat by Van Aert in the Tyrrhenian time trial and then a Romandie of tears and blood, an embarkation of cold and fatigue from which Filippo came out of a bad mood.
He closed in on himself, very little desire to speak, corners of his mouth turned downwards. Not the usual nice and communicative Ganna, in short, but nothing dramatic, as explained by Dario Cioni, coach of the Piedmontese and diesse Ineos: The Romandie did not go as he would have liked: he came back pissed off, I let him cool off and then we started to examine things together again. The truth is that Filippo in Switzerland was full of work in view of a very long season, which will ask him to be at the peak of his form at the Tokyo Games, where he will attempt the brace (time trial and team pursuit). After the Sanremo we set up a large training block: the Teide hill with Sivakov and the track in Montichiari – says Cioni -. The hope that he would recover better at Romandie but he was really very tired. But I’m not worried. It was all necessary work to do in view of the Olympics: the results to aim for are many, you have to make bets.
And then that debate that sees him – in spite of himself – at the center: can Filippo Ganna become a great stage racer? A discussion that does not help him, in Cancellara we have never asked to distort himself, the sailors have warned the coach Davide Cassani. For me, Filippo must not become anything that is not already – the opinion of Cioni -. It can be a symbol of Italian cycling even without conquering Giro or Tour, there are other goals, maybe in a couple of years we will focus on racing for a day.
with some slag in the haversack, in short, compared to the usual lightness of being Filippo Ganna, who today the boy from Vignone takes the crossroads of his second Giro d’Italia of his career. 3479.9 kilometers to understand more about listening to others a little less.
May 8, 2021 (change May 8, 2021 | 07:27)
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