Giro Week One Recap

The Maglia Rosa Abandons with Covid

I got some of these stages very wrong in my preview, and they weren’t happy surprises.

The stages I predicted to be epic battles with hilly sprinters mostly just turned out to be bunch sprints. The best stage so far was stage 8, won from the break by a rampaging Ben Healy, who if you’ll recall I had forecasted to essentially shit the bed in this Giro. He’s proven me wrong and is an even bigger talent than cycling fans realized.

Remco seemed to be dominating the GC battle, though most stages were pretty snoozy from my perspective. There was little GC action aside from the two time trials, both of which were won by the World Champion. He took the first in dominating fashion, absolutely cooking everyone, including putting 43 seconds into Primoz Roglic. The second TT, stage 9, was nail-bitingly close. Despite being 35 kilometers, the top five places were separated by just eight seconds. Remco defeated Geraint Thomas by one second and Tao Geoghegan Hart by two.

Remco lead the general classification by 45 seconds over Thomas on the first rest day, but he probably wanted more time. He should have won that second TT with a larger margin. Something was clearly wrong, as demonstrated by his dropping and losing 18 seconds to his top GC rivals on stage eight.

Disaster struck the 23-year-old and the race when it was announced that Remco had tested positive for COVID and would have to abandon the Giro d’Italia. This is the first time to my knowledge that a GC leader of a Grand Tour has lost a race due to COVID.

Geraint Thomas is the new Maglia Rosa with a slim lead over Primoz Roglic.

The way this Giro has been ridden so far, I’m not hopeful for much action in week two.

The only positive I can see from this news is that Remco might have to ride the Tour de France this year to avenge his disappointment in the Giro. Let’s hope he does and contends for the victory.