Tadej Pogacar decides even in the massive arrivals of the Giro

After 214 kilometers on the winding roads that go down towards the south, they turn towards the turquoise blue waters of the Tyrrhenian, they border the coast, with Vesuvius always majestic and threatening on the horizon, they ascend and descend hills of low houses, swimming pools many of them without a license and Mediterranean pines. After the usual movement of the platoon, the escapes, the hunts, the hopeless adventures, the spark of Alaphilippe, the bomb-proof morale of Maestri, the opportunism of Narváez; Behind all this there is always Tadej Pogacar, the omnipresent leader, who takes the role he most wants. There is the dominating cyclist, the relentless one, the decisive one, but there is also the companion. And in that role, Pogacar once again decided what was going to happen in the end.

But we will have to go back a few kilometers, almost 27 before reaching the finish line, with the two Polti runners, Maestri and Pietrobon, who had accumulated 180 kilometers on their legs, who were already giving up seconds of their escape in an endless drain while the The road went up and down the Neapolitan bay and the aerial shots from the helicopter showed the beauty of the island of Procida. There appeared Julian Alaphilippe, an optimistic runner, who saw the opportunity to fish while the peloton organized itself on one of the uncomfortable climbs in the final kilometers of the route.

The Frenchman took four companions in his wake. They caught up with the two Italians at the head, and while Pietrobon, exhausted, began to show signs of fatigue, Maestri accompanied Alaphilippe in the last of his starts to go alone and make his way to the finish line in Naples. The changes of pace of the double world champion, the man born in Saint-Amand-Montrond, in the heart of France, where they roast a cow every time the Tour passes through there, ended up exhausting Maestri. The difference with the peloton, in which the Trek insisted on hunting, seeking the arrival in a group for the greater glory of Jonathan Milan in the attempt of his second partial victory, was twenty seconds, and when it decreased, in a very long straight near the sea, Costiou jumped for Alaphilippe, stood at his level and tried to collaborate.

The relentless Trek, in high-speed train mode, was closing the distance. Costiou gave up, but not Alaphilippe, who clung to the opportunity that the last two-kilometer slope gave him, like a castaway to the life preserver thrown to him from a boat.

But there are many sharks lurking. One of them, Jonathan Narváez, who liked the podium in Turin, where he dressed in pink in the first stage, started furiously on that last climb, caught up and left Alaphilippe behind and headed towards the finish line, pursued by a platoon that was playing the last card. It was a relentless and uneven but exciting chase.

When Narváez headed down the street of the writer Giovanni Boccacio, it seemed like he wouldn’t make it; It changed the perception of the poet Francesco Petrarca, who, like any professional cyclist, ascended Mont Ventoux, and as a seasoned journalist, he described it in a letter, “driven solely by the desire to contemplate a place famous for its altitude.” . There was the last street, next to the sea, that of Admiral Caracciolo, and 500 meters before the finish, Narváez against the world, or against the peloton, which is the same for a cyclist.

And then Tadej Pogacar appeared in good companion mode. The leader of the Giro got behind the Lidl runners and hit a brutal acceleration to prepare for the arrival of his gregarious Juan Sebastián Molano. If Narváez had any chance of winning, Pogacar took it away from him. The leader’s pull unleashed fury. The Ecuadorian was ten meters away from reaching the finish line first, which Pogacar denied him with his start. And in the end Molano did not win, who finished third; Not even Jonathan Milan, the Lidl Trek candidate, for whom they fought so hard, but Olav Koolj, a Dutchman from Visma, who was passing by, with better legs than his rivals, of course.

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