La Mitica 2022
Sunday, June 26, 2022
La Mitica 2022
Monday, May 30, 2022
Thoughts on Giro d'Italia 2022
Giro d'Italia 2022
Let’s start with the good stuff: who can’t love the story of
Biniam Girmay, the audacity of Mathieu Van der Poel, the “Christopher Reeve as Superman”
looks and sprint domination of Arnaud Demare, the never-say-die long range attack
of Alessandro Covi, the surprise of Trek-Segafredo’s young Spaniard (the next
Hindley?) the over-performance of underdog teams like Alpecin and Intermarche,
not to mention the spectacular scenery and massive crowds along the roads saluting
Vincenzo Nibali in his final season?
Then there’s the winner, Jai Hindley, taking revenge on the
team who kept him off the top step of the Giro podium back in 2020 with a
bold, last-chance attack on the Giro’s queen stage to put an insurmountable gap
between him and INEOS team leader Richard Carapaz. This is a guy who came a
long way around the world to Italy to learn his craft, winning some races in
the Australian National Team jersey and racing with an Italian team based in Abruzzo.
A guy who hasn’t seen his parents since the Covid-19 pandemic began and the
first Australian winner ever of the Giro d’Italia.
But watching the race was sometimes a struggle, even for me,
an unabashed Italo-phile. Was the course too hard? Not in my opinion, why not
have an edition for climbers rather than “kite-men”? Were there not enough big
names racing? Plenty showed up but quite a few never made it to Verona, but
that’s part of a Grand Tour, you have to first finish to finish first. There
did seem to be a lot of racing not-to-lose, even Italian commentators talked
about boring stages and blamed a lot of it on the current technology and the “numbers
game” that is modern cycling under current UCI rules. That’s not the Giro
organizer RCS’ fault is it? Perhaps the Giro could make their own rules and ban
power-meters, heart rate monitors and the like? But we still had exploits like
from guys like MVdP and Covi, just not enough of them. Plenty of social media keyboard
lions whined about boring stages, but I figure anything not LeTour or without “their”
rider in the race and doing well is going to get complaints, so who cares what they think?
In the complaint department, I have two: One was the sport-washing of the Orban regime in Hungary. I know RCS needs the money but I thought Israel was a bad idea, now Hungary? Will Moscow be next? Second was the video coverage. There was lots of
talk last year about the poor TV production quality provided by Italian
national broadcaster RAI. This year’s TV images and some interviews were provided
by a private group, EMG I think it’s called. While their images never suffered
during inclement weather…wait a minute, there was NO inclement weather, the EMG director too often seemed not to understand how bike races work – countless times
missing attacks and deploying his camera motos at the front and back of one
group of riders while none covered other groups. There were plenty of TV motos
but they were rarely in the right place at the right time. RAI’s coverage has
been superior even if we were sometimes left with no images if/when the weather
went bad.
The interviewers provided by these people weren’t very good either,
asking banal questions way too often and why so little of Bradley Wiggins on
the moto? He’s one reason (Riccardo Magrini is another) we watched Eurosport
coverage vs RAI’s…at least until Magrini and Vladmir Belli started arguing, especially
when RAI cut to commercials. Adding Moreno Moser to the Eurosport commentary group was a great idea!
I WILL throw out some criticism for RAI - their Processo alla Tappa show was too often a let down. Bring back Alessandra De Stefano as host, per favore! Same with the morning show, Beppe Conti is great but please, please find someone else to be the host!
Perhaps not a vintage edition but looking back over the three
pink weeks, my time in front of the TV and seeing the race live, in-person was well
spent. I’m already looking forward to the 106th edition!
Sunday, May 29, 2022
Gravelicious
GRAVEL...far from new...but..
...this one has a twist. Heather's new Bianchi has something different. Can you tell what it is?
Above is a clue.
And the rear wheel hub is the giveaway, Mahle's E-bike Motion X35 system. Their X20 system looks even better and we're currently begging Favaloro to check it out with the idea of having something weighing around the same as our beloved steel bikes, yet with a battery and hub motor like X20. There are already bikes on the market weighing 11 kgs while this aluminum Bianchi is double that...but rides a lot like a normal bike when the motor is off...and you're not going uphill.
Yeah, we know, E-bikes are cheating. And Zio hates disc brakes, thru-axles and Shimano components...but when your doc says limit your heart rate to X and your husband complains that you're holding him back, what's the solution? The coolest thing about this is (now that we ditched the cheapo wire-bead tires, slapped on some non-flared handlebars and a decent-length stem) is the computer-controlled motor assist. Heather straps on a heart rate monitor and tells the bike to assist ONLY when her heart rate gets to a preset level. So when Zio Lorenzo is going too fast, the motor kicks-in and everyone's happy! And sometimes Zio has to chase uphill!
Friday, May 27, 2022
GIOS Raduno 2022
GIOS RADUNO 2022
Everyone left with great memories and this bottle of wine. Mille grazie to Marco, Aldo, Silvia and everyone who put on this great annual event. We keep our blue bikes in Monferrato so we can ride 'em in this event as well as the rest of the time we're up north. We'll be back up there in late June in fact...
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Giro d'Italia - TORINO
We go to the circus...again!
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Giro 2022 Avola-Etna
The circus comes to town!
La Corsa Rosa came back to home soil on Monday to be greeted by rain! Yep, sunny Sicily, where some journalist remarked they'd need an acclimation-day to get used to the searing heat of Italy's deep south after the first three stages, saw a few teams ride on trainers under their bus' awning rather than hit the road.
It was the same for us, though instead of riding on rollers we rode off to LIDL during a break in the weather.
A sharp-eyed fan spotted newly-retired Sicilian Giovanni Visconti (the linked-to piece needs updating) despite all his incognito clothing and bike! Still the same brands but all understated now as nobody's paying him to look like a billboard. But he's still out there riding a bike!