Giro d'Italia 2022
Start in Avola
La Corsa Rosa 2022 was challenging to say the least. Will it
go down as a vintage edition? Probably not as the course revealed back in the
fall of 2021 looked really, really tough and turned out to be just that. I mean
just watching it on TV! It was not only a test for the competitors, a real
last-man-standing battle of attrition, but a real challenge to watch day after
day.
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?
We like Magro and Co on Eurosport
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.
The Torino stage was exciting
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?
Gios Raduno visits La Corsa Rosa
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.
Bring back RAI!
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!
Here's another take on Giro d'Italia 2022.
