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The Giro d’Italia did not climb Mount Etna when it first visited Sicily in 1930, however the volcano made an impression on the race all the identical. Or, extra precisely, on the eventual race winner. Luigi Marchisio’s debut Giro risked coming to a untimely finish when he was struck within the eye by a chip of volcanic rock because the gruppo skirted the bottom of Etna on stage 2.
Undeterred, the 21-year-old stayed within the race, received the subsequent day’s stage to Messina and held the general lead all the way in which to Milan, although he was compelled to put on a bandage over his eye for a number of days.
“In Palermo, I used to be handled by a specialist who suggested me to not proceed the race as a result of I risked shedding my sight,” Marchisio mentioned when the race reached Milan. “Dropping my sight is one factor, however not successful the Giro would actually have bothered me.”
Etna remained however a pissed off observer when the corsa rosa returned to Sicily in 1949. Certainly, the summit was shrouded in heavy cloud when the Giro handed by the pistachio groves of Bronte beneath on stage 2. The novelist Dino Buzzati immortalised that yr’s race with a sequence of color items for Il Corriere della Sera, and he imagined the annoyance of the mighty volcano at lacking out on seeing Coppi and Bartali journey previous: “The identical outdated rotten luck. The Giro hasn’t come to Sicily for 19 years. It lastly comes this yr [and] I have been making an attempt to shake off these rotten clouds for 2 days.”
It was solely in 1967, on the Giro’s fifth go to to the island, that the race lastly scaled Mount Etna for the primary of 5 summit finishes up to now. As a rule, Etna comes early within the race, and general contenders have been compelled to play a ready sport on its sparse slopes, however the mighty volcano all the time carries greater than a whiff of hazard.
1967: Bitossi claims the summit
The 1967 Giro made a two-day detour to Sicily on the finish of the opening week, and stage 7 climbed to 1,892 metres above sea degree for a stage end on the mountain lodge of Rifugio Sapienza, though the anticipated eruption of the overall classification by no means materialised. As a substitute, in protest on the prolonged transfers imposed by race director Vincenzo Torriani, the gruppo rode at a fairly tectonic tempo till the ultimate three kilometres of the stage.
Franco Bitossi streaked to victory forward of Aurelio Gonzales-Puente on the summit, however the subsequent day’s headlines have been in regards to the apparent go-slow beforehand fairly than for Cuore Matto’s successful effort. Within the pages of La Stampa, Gianni Pignata archly famous the various Sicilian followers on the roadside brandishing indicators bearing the legend ‘Grazie Torriani!’
“We are able to add a Grazie Torriani of our personal, however ours is a little more ironic,” he wrote, mentioning that the riders had first travelled by in a single day ferry from Naples to Palermo after which, after a circuit stage in Palermo, confronted a five-hour practice journey onwards to Catania. “A wierd episode was famous through the Catania-Etna stage, which ought to have been the primary rendezvous for the favourites: not a riders’ strike, however one thing that appeared very prefer it from shut up.”
1989: Da Silva’s dash
Though the Giro was a frequent customer to Sicily within the intervening interval, 22 years handed earlier than the race returned to complete at Mount Etna. The 1989 Giro started on the island with a brief, flat stage from Taormina to Catania, however then headed for an early summit end on stage 2 with a 132km leg to the Rifugio Sapienza.
This trip, the race climbed solely to 1,302 metres above sea degree – “a semi-sprint,” sniffed journalist Gian Paolo Ormezzano, though he applauded the truth that the race completed by a resort rebuilt after it was destroyed within the eruption of 1983 – and a gaggle of greater than 20 riders duly remained in competition on reaching the ultimate kilometre. Acacio da Silva, newly arrived at Carrera after a stint as Sean Kelly’s wingman at Kas, was reside to all hazard on the ultimate method to the road, monitoring Tony Rominger’s transfer beneath the flamme rouge after which monitoring Ivan Ivanov when the Alfa Lum rider accelerated shortly afterwards.
With a little bit below 300 metres to go, Da Silva launched a searing effort of his personal, and the Portuguese rider held off Luis Herrera, Rominger and Marino Lejaretta to say victory and a short lived maintain on the maglia rosa. The eventual general winner, Laurent Fignon, rolled residence in the identical time in sixth place.
2011: Contador’s win that wasn’t
The Giro has been a extra frequent customer to Mount Etna within the twenty first century, and the race’s arrival in 2011 coincided with a interval when the volcano got here more and more for use a training-camp location for Grand Tour contenders. The late Michele Scarponi visited twice within the build-up to the 2011 Giro, and he spoke to Marco Pastonesi of La Gazzetta dello Sport of the refined difficulties of the climb.
“Etna is not a kind of locations the place you are feeling such as you’ve already been there in the event you’ve watched it on TV or studied it on a map,” Scarponi mentioned, though he nonetheless did not anticipate that the climb, which got here on stage 9 of a tumultuous race, would provoke telling gaps among the many general contenders. “It is onerous however you go up it shortly. It does not provoke a variety, not less than not among the many GC males. There’s an opportunity of it ending in a dash.”
Alberto Contador had different concepts. The Courtroom of Arbitration for Sport had but to deliberate on his optimistic take a look at for clenbuterol on the earlier yr’s Tour de France, and the Spaniard was thus free to compete on the Giro. Having outlined his intentions with a shock assault at Tropea the day before today, Contador shredded the group of favourites with a vicious acceleration 6km from the summit.
Solely Scarponi may initially match Contador’s acceleration, however he quickly relented because the Spaniard bridged throughout to a resurgent José Rujano. On the ultimate method to Rifugio Sapienza, Rujano, too, needed to give finest as Contador flashed throughout the road with 50 seconds in hand on Vincenzo Nibali and over a minute on Scarponi.
Contador seized the maglia rosa and would maintain all of it the way in which to Milan – solely to lose it in February 2012, when CAS handed him a backdated two-year ban and stripped him of each the 2010 Tour de France and 2011 Giro titles.
2017: Polanc seizes his alternative
All eyes have been on Vincenzo Nibali when the Giro hit the slopes of Mount Etna on stage 4. He had already raced on the mountain in 2011, in fact, however that was earlier than both of his general victories on the Giro, his Tour triumph of 2014 and his high-profile transfer to the newly based Bahrain-Merida crew in 2017.
The volcano is an intrinsic a part of the origin fable of Lo Squalo. Aged 10, he rode to the summit from Linguaglossa, turning into so weary that he needed to be towed by his mom’s automobile within the ultimate kilometres, and there was a level of native expectation that he may full the circle by successful atop the mountain 22 years later.
This trip, the Giro approached the end at Rifugio Sapienza by a extra arduous route, with pitches of 12% on the 18km haul up the volcano from Nicolosi. Nibali’s Bahrain-Merida teammate Franco Pellizotti examined the waters 9km from the highest, earlier than Nibali himself unsheathed an acceleration of his personal with 4km remaining in a bid to check rival Nairo Quintana. A block headwind, nonetheless, quickly put paid to his effort.
“It wasn’t simple to assault with a headwind like that, however I attempted, simply to see if it might kick off with assaults and counter assaults,” Nibali mentioned afterwards.
The eventual Giro winner, Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb), underscored his type by making a tentative dig of his personal after Nibali was introduced again, however the day belonged to lone escapee Jan Polanc (UAE Staff Emirates). A part of the day’s early break, the Slovenian dropped his companions on the decrease slopes after which fastidiously managed his buffer to carry on to win by 19 seconds from Ilnur Zakarin.
“I wasn’t fascinated with something anymore – simply that I used to be near ending and that each second counted,” Polanc mentioned.
2018: Simon Yates cuts to the chase
Take two. After the race largely did not ignite on Etna 12 months beforehand, Mauro Vegni introduced the Giro again in 2018 by way of a extra arduous method from Ragalna, and with a better ending line, on the astrophysical observatory some 1,736 metres above sea degree. Statistically, the ascent was not altogether completely different from the one tackled on earlier events – 15km at a median gradient of 6.5%, with most slopes of 15% – however native riders warned beforehand that its irregular slopes made it extra taxing than different sides of the volcano.
Etna as soon as once more got here early within the Giro, on stage 6, however after a prolonged switch from the Grande Partenza in Israel and two wearying levels that traversed Sicily’s rugged inside. The preamble to Etna was harder, too, and a break of 28 riders solid clear with greater than 100km remaining.
Mitchelton-Scott positioned Esteban Chaves within the transfer, and the Colombian proceeded to bounce away from his companions with 5km to go, simply because the pink jersey group had closed to inside 30 seconds or so of the remnants of the break.
Behind, Chaves’ teammate Simon Yates dutifully tracked the accelerations within the fragmenting group of favourites, responding firmly when males like Domenico Pozzovivo and Thibaut Pinot pressured the tempo. Then, having surveyed the opposition, Yates unleashed an assault of his personal with 1,500m to go.
“He kicked like a bull,” LottoNL-Jumbo’s George Bennett mentioned afterwards. Yates swooped throughout to his teammate Chaves nearby of the road, however waved him by to say the stage victory. The Mitchelton-Scott pair got here residence 26 seconds forward of the chasers, who included Sunweb’s Tom Dumoulin and Chris Froome (Staff Sky), and Yates moved into the maglia rosa.
It was a precursor of what was to come back, as Yates glided to a hat-trick of stage wins, all whereas carrying the pink jersey, though, cruelly, he would lose the Giro to Froome simply two days from the end in Rome, when he conceded greater than 38 minutes after shedding contact on the Finestre.
2020: Caicedo, Almeida break by
The 2020 Giro d’Italia, postponed till October due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was a really unusual race. That yr the Giro was after the World Championships, two weeks after the Tour de France, stage 3 to Mount Etna was run in the future after Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and the Vuelta a España overlapped with the ultimate week.
The Etna stage culminated in a common classification hierarchy that was as upended because the calendar.
Jonathan Caicedo (EF Professional Biking) survived from the day’s early breakaway and soared away within the rain to the cloud-shrouded summit in a breakthrough victory in his second professional season.
“Final yr one thing like this simply appeared out of attain, we have been making an attempt and following, however this yr it is good,” the Ecuadoran mentioned.
Behind, Mitchelton-Scott did many of the work in hopes of setting Yates up for a repeat of 2018 however the Briton was already struggling in the back of the peloton with 10km nonetheless to climb and completed 4 minutes down.
After beginning the stage in third place general, Geraint Thomas (Ineos) had a freak crash within the impartial zone when he hit a bidon that had bounced out of one other rider’s cage. He wouldn’t begin the subsequent day.
The maglia rosa went to 21-year-old João Almeida (Deceuninck-Quickstep).
“I can’t describe what I really feel proper now, it’s prefer it’s a dream come true. I’ll try to defend this lead, even when a stage win could be nice as properly,” Almeida mentioned after successful his first stage. He would stubbornly maintain onto the race lead for 15 levels and end fourth general. The race, too, would overcome the surging coronavirus instances and sanitary measures, and end in Milan.
Eventual general Giro d’Italia winner Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos) misplaced 2:33 on the stage displaying that the features and losses on a mountain as early as Etna will not be all the time as necessary as they might appear.
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