“I’ll take ‘Things I didn’t expect to write about in pro cycling’ for $500, Alex.”
The Giro d’Italia peloton has found itself talking about something decidedly less glamorous than pink jerseys and tiramisu this week: riders peeing into water bottles.
After stage 9, the organizers issued a pointed but odd reminder that taking a little wee into your bottle and tossing them aside is now strictly forbidden. In the warning, it cited, well, optics.
“To respect the image of cycling and the Giro d’Italia, the organizer and the Commissaires’ Panel inform all riders that urinating into a bottle and subsequently discarding it is strictly prohibited.”
The warning immediately raised eyebrows because, while the practice clearly exists, several riders suggested it is hardly a peloton-wide epidemic. But is still, was, happening.
“I don’t think it’s really a thing in the peloton, but more something with a few riders,” Belgian rider Dries Van Gestel told Sporza.
Oliver Naesen told the Belgian broadcaster that the trick has been around for years, tracing it back to Peter Sagan. Naesen said he only really knew of two riders associated with it: Sagan and Victor Campenaerts.
Campenaerts, unsurprisingly, played coy when asked about it, brushing off the topic. “No idea what that is about,” the popular pro cyclist and amateur vlogger said.
Taking the piss, literally
The issue, though, is less about what happens inside the race and more about what happens afterward. Bidons are prized souvenirs at the Giro, or any pro race, especially among kids lining the roadside.
Riders acknowledged that nobody wants a fan enthusiastically grabbing the wrong bottle. Because that would be pretty damn gross to grab a warm bidon. You’ve heard of sticky bottles. Now we have icky bottles.
“I wouldn’t like to be the person who picks up that water bottle,” Arjen Livyns said in Sporza’s timely think piece on portable water bottle toilets.
Naesen agreed, noting that spectators scramble for discarded bottles and could easily end up with a very, very unpleasant surprise.
But why are some lads creating these toxic tumblrs? Pros are constantly hydrating, and that means in the course of a five- or six-hour race, there’s gonna be multiple times to take a tinkle.
The problem is that increasingly packed roadside crowds make discreet bathroom breaks harder than ever.
“You try to look for places where there are no people, but in the stages with good weather…
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