The sea and the light of his Messina, where he arrived at the end of the fifth stage of the Giro d'Italia, gave Vincenzo Nibali the strength to announce that at the end of the season he will most likely put an end to an exciting career.
A statement that was in the air but which did not fail to move him as he pronounced it to the Rai microphones, shortly after getting off the saddle: "I had been waiting for this stage for a few years. Right in the land where I was born and started pedaling, I wanted to announce that this will be my last Giro d'Italia and that I will probably retire at the end of the year ", said the Shark in tears, while a little further on the winner in the sprint of today's stage, the Frenchman Arnaud Demare, and the Spanish Juan Pedro Lopez, who kept the pink jersey won yesterday.
Tired but happy with this departure at the 105th edition of @giroditalia!
Tired but happy with the start
of the 105th edition of Giro d'Italia!
@ Budapest, Hungary https://t.co/X8fuywyYa9
- Vincenzo Nibali (@vincenzonibali) May 6, 2022
It is not a curtain that falls, because the Giro and the season are still long, but now on the threshold of 38 years, which will turn in November, Nibali has acknowledged that he has given and had almost everything possible in a professional career that has begun. in 2005 and which saw him triumph twice in the pink race (2013 and 2016) and once in the Tour de France (2014) and the Vuelta (2010), as well as two Tours of Lombardy and one Milan-Sanremo, a palmares that shares the pedal with very few other samples.
Few recriminations, even if anger remains for the fall that canceled the dream of Olympic gold at the Rio Games.
"I have collected a lot in my career, I have tried to do the best so far - said Nibali, looking at some pictures of his victories -. I am excited, this is where my story began,
with the first races in Sicily, which I then left at 15.
I have given a lot to cycling and perhaps the time has come to be able to give back a little what I have stolen from family, friends, everything I have sacrificed for two wheels ".
Giro: Nibali closes his career at the end of the year, I have given a lot.In the meantime, however, the Giro continues and after the bad day yesterday, when he and his Astana accused several minutes of delay at the finish line on Etna, Nibali is not for nothing resigned and promised to "invent something in the coming weeks. We'll see if there is room to aim for the stages or the classification".
This is what all the fans have learned to expect from a champion who will miss Italy in cycling a lot, especially in a moment of not great glory, at least for the men's sector.
The Shark has always been able to impress, with his class but also his modesty, earning great respect even among the many opponents he has faced in 18 years of professionalism.
Dry your tears, tight in
affection of fellow citizens and many friends in the caravan, Nibali will cross the Strait tomorrow and return to the saddle for the sixth stage, 190 km starting from Palmi and arriving in Scalea.
Another fraction favorable to the sprinters and which could give the Italians a chance, who today showed up in the sprint with Giacomo Nizzolo third at the finish line, Davide Ballerini fifth and Simone Consonni tenth.