May 27, 2023
Was it all a bit much, really?
Sometimes when I’m watching bike racing on television, I try to put myself in the shoes of someone who has never watched the sport before. There are occasions, like when it is a nail-biting sprint finish or a dramatic fight for a breakaway, when I think it would be an easy sell. When I think that I could really convince someone who is on the verge of becoming a cycling fan that this is one of the most adrenaline-filled and exciting sports in the world, with characters and storylines that will break your heart and lift your spirits all at the same time. I don’t always feel this way, though. In long sprint stages when the peloton is meandering along wide roads for hours, or when you’ve been waiting weeks for some general classification action (yes, I am looking at you 2023 Giro d’Italia), it’s much harder to think of how you’d persuade someone to spend hours watching bike racing on TV.
Normally in Grand Tours, stages fall in either of these two categories – I can easily decide on which ones I’d recommend watching back to non-cycling fans to bring them onboard the bike racing hype and which I’d firmly put in the boring box to never be seen again. Stage 20 of this year’s Giro d’Italia, though, was somewhat of an anomaly. Watching Primož Roglič and Geraint Thomas in the final stages of their time trials battling it out for the pink jersey, was the excitement I’d been expecting, but for the almost six hours of TV coverage before that, stage 20 didn’t fall into the camp of being really dull or really thrilling. It was just a bit weird.
Let’s start with the day before. Rumour has it that the Ineos Grenadiers had been standing in a car park in Italy practicing how they were going to execute their bike change in the 25 metre-long zone that the riders were permitted to use at the base of the Monte Lussari climb. They didn’t use the then race leader Geraint Thomas for this dress rehearsal, presumably to avoid any unnecessary fatigue, but instead drafted in his teammates as bike change dummies.
Hopping on and off bikes as quick as possible has sort of become normalised to the seasoned fans among us who have seen it before in cyclo-cross or in past time trials which have required a bike change, but imagine trying to seriously explain to someone…