We’re into double figures. We’re now deep into the Giro, Day 10 in fact, and the cracks are starting to show! Firstly, there was a horrific incident of five of the team’s staff getting on the wrong side of some VERY raw, yet delicious steak, which fortunately didn’t lead to a team-wide outbreak of GIT problems. Thank goodness for Universal Precautions! Secondly (and as ever, less importantly) the riders are now in the hurt basket pretty much permanently.
The racing to date has been through pretty horrific conditions, both weather-wise, and racecourse-wise. Yesterday was a particularly good example of both issues — the boys were riding through a rain squall of significant size, and then found themselves having to ride through standing water all the way up to their pedals.
Some called a small river, although I would have called it a creek myself. The boys tend to exagerrate at times! Southern Italy, road drainage and planning are minor details.
We’ve been bopping away with some solid, although not brilliant results, but hopefully today will see a bunch sprint, and hopefully Tyler will be the man at the front of said sprint. True, a lot of “hopefullys”, but not unreasonable ones!
The other key event of the race since the last message — Cadel Evans winning one of the most epic stages of Giro history with the coolest tactic of all: ride them all off your wheel!
All of the boys crossed the line absolutely caked in mud (it was a race over clay roads for 17 of the final 20km), freezing cold, exhausted, and all saying they were happy they had finished it so they could say they were in the race THAT day. Pretty cool. Dave Millar dragged himself up to third overall on that day too.
We’ve got 16km to go today, so that’ll be all he wrote.
GO TY!
