HE didn’t quire win the Giro at his first attempt but a future champion has emerged in Australian cycling, writes JOHN TREVORROW:
THE Giro d’Italia came to a nail-biting and heartbreaking conclusion in the streets of Milan on Sunday.
In the end Jai Hindley, from Perth, may have lost the Giro by 39 seconds but he has won a huge amount of respect across the globe.
As the pair approached the start ramp for their final duel, it was Hindley who broke the ice and sportingly offered his adversary a fist bump.
Hindley and Teo Geoghegan Hart began the final, 15.7km individual time trial separated by a fraction of a second but it was the Brit that proved the strongest against the clock by 36 seconds.
The pair have been virtually locked together for the past three weeks. They both started the race as support for their higher profile teammates but one thing that has become quite apparent in this Covid year is that the new generation have arrived.
Geoghagen Hart lost his Ineos Grenadiers leader Geraint Thomas very early but Hindley’s Sunweb captain Wilco Kelderman only cracked under pressure in the last few days. And, ironically, it was the amazing performance of Aussie Rohan Dennis that really delivered the telling blow to Kelderman. The boy from Adelaide was brilliant on the Stelvio and again on Sestriere where his relentless pace absolutely smashed everyone except Geoghagen Hart and Hindley, the boy from Perth.
“It’s been a hell of a ride and real roller coaster,” Hindley said. “It’s been really good fun and a hell of an experience. It’s bittersweet at the moment, but eventually it will sink in. It’s also an incredible feeling to be standing on the podium outside the Duomo in Milan. It’s amazing.”
There are some major positives to come out of this Giro. Firstly Jai Hindley has become the first Australian to make the final podium of the Giro d’Italia – Second he has become a major star on the world cycling scene partly because of his tenacious style but also because of his humility and team spirit.
And finally, both Hindley and Dennis showed that they have the rare ability to be Grand Tour champions in the future.
Spaniard Ion Izagirre (Astana) won the sixth stage of the Vuelta a Espana, riding away from the breakaway on the final climb after an earlier attack by his older brother and teammate Gorka softened up the opposition.
But the real race was back in the peloton where the GC contenders were battling the conditions as much as the mountains.
Embed from Getty ImagesRace leader and defending champion Primoz Roglic was having problems fitting his rain jacket on the penultimate climb and dropped back to sort it out. Right at that moment his main opposition went on the attack and it took a concerted effort from the Jumbo Visma team to get the Slovenian back in contention. The efforts spent in doing so meant Roglic couldn’t react to the final attack from 2019 Giro winner Richard Carapaz (Ineos Grenadiers) and Brit Hugh Carthy (EF Pro Cycling).
Carthy gained the most time of the top contenders, moving into second overall at 18 seconds from Carapaz, with Dan Martin (Israel Start-Up Nation) fighting to hold onto third overall at 20 seconds and Roglic dropping to fourth at 30 seconds.
“Today it didn’t go as we had hoped,” Roglic said. “In the descent of the penultimate climb I had problems with my clothes, so we were a bit too far back when the peloton broke. We had to pull out all the stops to get back. Eventually we managed to do that, but on the final climb I had not much left in my legs to counter the attacks. We have given everything.”
But with a rest day to recover and two very tough weeks of the Vuelta still on the menu this tantalising race still has much to wet the appetite.
JOHN TREVORROW is a multiple Australian champion road racer and Olympian who has been doing media commentary at the Tour de France for more than 20 years.
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