Third and final from the 2017 Giro D'Italia
By Dave Land, posted 1 June 2017
The third and final installment of our Giro schooling, comes after a nailbiting final day time-trail (who'd have thought). Following last weeks poo-gate, and our annoyance with Quintana for attacking whilst Dumoulin had a crisis of ...ummm...confidence, we spent some time wondering about the ethics of attacking during 'downtime' (don't).
But, in the end we saw that for once, despite our predictions, the good guy came first, hurray!
What seemed especially strange is that all the commentators were talking about this being the best Giro for ages. Yet this was the first Giro JRtB has really followed carefully. Tied in, no doubt, to the first showing of the Giro on terrestrial television. So, thank you Quest, for supporting cycling on television. We might have some issues with Jonathan Edwards - clearly a nice guy, not sure about his hosting, can someone please just pay Imlach and Boardman whatever they want. And its clear that opinion is divided about Sean Kelly's analytical skills.
Nevertheless, it was great to be able to catch up with it everyday. Whilst you can follow Twitter (which we love at JRtB), and find out a variety of more-or-less useless facts, there's something about watching cycle racing in a grand tour that is hypnotic.
The lesson, therefore is a short yet simple one. Don't give up. Yes, that sounds rather patronising, and meaningless, but watching the entirely ragged Tom Dumoulin just manage to squeeze a bit of time out of the final day's time trail to edge out the mysterious Nairo 'I'm just doing some training at home in the mountains honest' Quintana, made us feel that these things are not as set in stone as they sometimes seem. And despite Nibali and Quintana's obvious double-header activity to try keep a young upstart from the win, it was the generous, polite, hardworking Dutchman, that, on the last day, 31 seconds from the end of the Giro, that took the win. Chapeau Tom, keep riding that bike!