In the Giro d’Italia, as in life, everything can change in an instant. On top of the Colla di Boasi, Tao Geoghegan Hart was comfortably at the front of the peloton as it sped towards the end of stage 11 in Tortona and in the heart of the battle for overall victory in Rome.
His Giro would end on the other side, where he was the worst affected of the fallers in a mass crash on the rain-slicked road. Instead of racing north to Tortona for the next hour, Geoghegan Hart was stretchered onto an ambulance and driven south to Sampierdarena Hospital on the outskirts of Genoa.
“We don’t have news,” his directeur sportif Matteo Tosatto told Cyclingnews outside the team bus at the finish in Tortona. “He was in a lot of pain, it seemed to be his leg. We said, ‘Tao, will you be able to keep going?’ and he said, ‘No, no, no, I’m in too much pain.’ We don’t have news from the hospital yet. It’s a serious loss and a big loss for us. But sport is like that.”
The extent of Geoghegan Hart’s injuries are yet to be revealed, but he posted a message to social media: “I’m devastated this is how my Giro ended. Thank you all for your messages and support. I was so excited about the remainder of this race and loving every minute of it.”
As Tosatto was speaking, another of his riders, Pavel Sivakov, was still riding alone and bloodied to the finish after coming down in the same crash as Geoghegan Hart. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, it looked as though the Frenchman’s Giro might also come to a halt, but he eventually set out and gingerly completed the 68km to Tortona by himself, more than 13 minutes behind the gruppo.
Sivakov wasn’t entirely alone in his endeavour, mind. A commissaire kept a close vigil on his solitary effort, swatting away any attempt from a team car to offer him a friendly slipstream to follow towards Tortona. In the Giro, as in the Divine Comedy, every circle of hell has a dedicated guardian.
“At the start, it looked like Pavel wouldn’t be able to keep going either, but he stayed with the doctor for five minutes and then he started pedalling again and that’s a good sign,” Tosatto said. “He’ll lose a lot of time, but the important thing is that he’s still in the race. We just hope it’s nothing serious for him because it would be very difficult to lose two riders like them today.”
Still, it could have been worse. In the Giro, as in life, it could always have been worse. The maglia rosa Geraint Thomas was the first of the Ineos riders to fall on the…
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