Georg Steinhauser, first; 1m 24s later Tadej Pogacar arrives, second. One by one at the top. Rest was this, absence, indifference. Be as if you were not there.
Tadej Pogacar, the pink lighthouse, looks around and lets his companions act, the usual ones who seek to win the stage –Bardet, the Soudals, Nairo, Ullrich’s nephew, Steinhauser…–, those who seek to disorient, and perhaps tire , to their rivals for the podium – the Ineos of Thomas and Arensman; the Bahrains of Tiberi; Martínez, O’Connor–, to those who are content to endure, and toast for it, like Pellizzari, who dreams of blue in the mountains. The desires of humans who have chosen to be cyclists. There is no danger, only what he can create himself. Nobody attacks him. Everyone is in charge of doing their job, of neutralizing themselves.
Everything in the Giro is foreign to those who dominate it without violence, a tyrant despite themselves, except perhaps the landscapes of the soaked Dolomites, green and white, and gray between the clouds, which envelop and leave everyone breathless, and move, because they link their pedal strokes to those of the classics, Coppi, Bartali, Girardengo, Merckx, Fuente, who invented the Giro as an epic: the volcanic atoll of Sella, the red fir forest, the Norwegian spruces, from which Stradivarius extracted the wood to make their violins that cross ascending the Passo Rolle towards the blades, long teeth of pale granite, from San Martino de Castrozza, and the only stage missing is Father Pordoi to close the trilogy, but it is replaced by the double passage through the Brocon, a minor pass where the day ends, so short, and the victory of Steinhauser, the most persistent of those who try, the best legs in the rain and the cold, 34 kilometers alone in which at no time He thought of nothing, not even of his father, Tobias, who was a cyclist in the Life of Javier Mínguez, 20 years ago, and from whom he inherited the cycling virus; not even his aunt Sara, Tobias’ sister, whom Ullrich, the anti-Armstrong, married in 2006. “I simply focused on the road, which was super slippery from the rain. I didn’t leave my zone,” says the ruddy Bavarian from EF at the finish line, so happy after his first victory as a professional. “Hopefully this is the start of a great career. I only got nervous when I heard on the radio that Pogacar was moving behind. I knew that he could not relax me for a minute.”
It is a moving vision, so human, so naive, that of tired heroes seeking to rebel against fatalism, despair. That of Steinhauser, so young, 22 years old, on the last ascent of Brocon. What a beautiful Giro it would be if only between them the final victory was decided. If there wasn’t a pink shadow around them, like a ghost, that reminded everyone, them and the fans, that they only fight to be second. Cycling of suffering. Steinhauser contorts on the Cannondale on the highest slopes, he cannot find sprockets to lighten his pedal stroke, which he executes in slow motion. He doesn’t whistle lightly like the cyclist touched with the wand, the enigma from another world, perhaps, who just over two kilometers from the top resolves the brawl between Dani Martínez, who eagerly sips a couple of gels that his friend Nairo gives him and attacks, breaking the purr of the Ineos, and Geraint Thomas, who puffs, and accelerates, getting up agilely from the saddle, without even opening his mouth, without a wrinkle on his clean, still hairless face. Steinhauser, the tenacious German, is too far away then, at 2m 40s, to hope to win, but even for just the handful of seconds with which he punishes his podium companions, Pogacar once again shows that in his pink world there is only room for he. The faces of everyone, Dani Martínez, second overall, at 7m 42s; Geraint Thomas, third, at 8m 4s; prematurely aged faces, so many wrinkles, so much pain, so much cold at the top, and confusion.
Gravity does weigh on Steinhauser. Flesh and bone, and so much heart. “E tua, vai! Bravissimo!! Bravo, bravo, bravo!!”, frozen fans shout in the ditches, happy to see someone they feel close to winning. Because Pogacar was approaching from behind, who did not want to win, he says, “just stretch his legs a little,” and you can hear his whistle between the pines. “I held on well until the end, so it was a very nice stage,” says the leader, wearing a black wool cap who lets a blonde lock escape at the finish line. “Martínez tried to attack, I followed him, and then I decided to make a little effort, and I moved away and kept my pace until the end. And I’m very happy that Steinhauser won. For me it is also like a victory, I am very happy.”
Studying the four days that remain until his coronation in Rome, Pogacar quickly turns the pages of the stages on Thursday – a probable volata in Padua, in the Campo de San Antonio – and on Friday – halfway up the mountain towards Sappada, where Roche finished off Visentini ago. 38 years old–, and stops at Saturday’s. “I’m satisfied with the way things are, even if I don’t earn anything more. Everything that comes now will be a bonus,” he says. “The main objective is always to keep the jersey in Rome, not to do anything else, and above all not to do anything stupid. However, on the eve of Rome there is a very nice stage, Monte Grappa, near Slovenia… We’ll see what can happen there.”
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