Pogacar Makes Roadracing Boring

This year’s Giro d’Italia is one of the best Grand Tour’s I’ve followed. And the reason? The absence of Tadej Pogacar. Pogacar wasn’t around to defend the Giro title this year, probably to focus on the Tour de France. Pogacar beat his rival by almost 10 minutes and as far as I was concerned, it was a humdrum of a race.

This year was different. Team UAE, Pogacar’s team, sent the next two best riders, Spaniard Juan Ayuso and Mexican Isaac del Toro with Ayuso as the team leader. But Ayuso faltered, got stung by a bee and had to drop out of the race. On the other hand, Slovenian Primoz Roglic was the favorite but he also faltered and after crashing a few times, he went home.

This left us with three riders consisting for the pink jersey- del Toro, who was wearing the leader’s pink jersey going into the penultimate stage. Forty sec behind was Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz and Brit Simon Yates sat 1.41mi.

The main hurdle was the beast of a mountain called the Col de Finestre, an 18km climb with an average grade of 9%. It’s the same grade going up to Marco Polo, but just 18k long. It is half paved and half gravel making the climb more challenging.

For the main cast: Caparaz had won this race in 2019, while Simon Yates won the Vuelta a Espana in 2019, two veteran riders already had their careers made. Del Toro on the other hand is just a sophomore in the pro peloton and had his first win as a pro this year. He is 21 years old.

As I have mentioned earlier, Del Toro wasn’t the team leader but he inherited the leader’s jersey with the thought that he was just keeping it warm for his captain, Ayuso. But as Del Toro was getting more confident, Ayuso was showing signs of weakness. And I’m sure that this was the main reason why Ayuso quit, not the bee sting.

Going up the Finestre, the aggressive Carapaz had attacked  de Toro multiple times but he counted to drop the young Mexican. Yates, on the other hand, was like 30sec when he started  to chase down the duo. He caught them, attacked them a few times and finally after the fourth attack, he was let go, and there was still a lot of climbing to go. And this is where the real story started.

Why did Carapaz not chase Yates? Why did del Toro not help Carapaz to pull back Yates? In the end, Yates did the improbable, beat the favorites and now is headed to Rome with a 3min lead.

These are all conjectures but I think the reason why both didn’t chase Yates was ego. For Carapaz, he already won the Giro, but he couldn’t dispose of del Toro. Del Toro wasn’t willing to help Carapaz because he was afraid that he would just attack him. In other words, both were expecting each other to do the work and in the end, I think, both would rather see each lose than allow one to win.

I know it’s a ridiculous situation but if you are not into bike racing, you won’t understand it. YOu can watch the analysis online to form your own opinion but that’s mine. What if Pogacar was in this race? Well, we can all go to sleep now.