The squad enters Genoa via the San Giorgio bridge highway. LUCA ZENNARO (EFE)
They laugh at
bypasses
killers who terrorize motorists, who are Genoa, narrow between the Mediterranean and the Apennines, and before them the city opens as the Red Sea opened for Moses, but no one is chasing them, they are the vanguard of the same army, which, dazzled by the vision, crosses Genoa from the heights of its highways in the sky, already 70 over the San Giorgio bridge, a light and flown one kilometer straight, and tall pillars like New York skyscrapers, built more with the haste of an accelerated cyclist , an insatiable Van der Poel to the point of exhaustion, perhaps, who with the grace of slow time to replace the sinking Morandi viaduct with laziness, have the world at their feet.
To the left, the old city, an accumulation of tall buildings, like breathless phrases, all looking at the sea, at the setting sun in the background.
On the right,
The phase.
A wonderful city.
A broken fugue.
An end to three.
A Dutch almost child, Leemreize, who invents the cut of the curve, useless.
A photo finish
victory
of another new Italian, Stefano Oldani, 24 years old, who, like the Dainese of the day before, has trained and grown in non-Italian teams, in the Kometa of Contador's youngsters, where he coincided with Juanpe, always in pink, and then in Belgium, in the Lotto and now in the Alpecin, where Van der Poel pampers him, and helps him achieve the first victory of his life.
But Oldani is different and, among other things, he cannot participate in his Alpecin concentrations, because all his companions sleep in hypobaric chambers, poor in oxygen, to simulate stays in height, 2,000 or 2,500 meters, a method that he cannot use because it is prohibited by Italian law.
“We are the only country that prohibits them.
And it's stupid,” he says.
Another Italian in a Belgian team, Lorenzo Rota, from the Intermarché de Girmay, has been in charge of destroying the escape in Col de la Colletta, Ligurian Apennines, and its vertiginous, vertical descent to the sea, and before, in the Bocco pass towards Chiavari, on the easy side, of course, old people remember Indurain wounded in '94, of a time trial climb from Chiavari to Bocco, on the hard side, of course, in which the Berzin comet made him lean, final, and he they also remember, of course, and cry, that Luis Ocaña was not there, commenting on it for the radio.
Three weeks earlier, on May 19, yes, instead of taking the car to join one more Giro, the Cuenca champion shot himself in the head in front of his Armagnac vineyards.
It would take three years for Juanpe to be born, who is not made to suffer by the problems he faces, but rather to laugh openly.
In English they ask him if he shouldn't sign Juampe, and not Juanpe, as the RAE recommends, and he laughs, fed up with a controversy that slips him, and that wouldn't have existed if he hadn't already been wearing pink for nine days.
“I am Juanpe, with ene, [and he pronounces it emphasizing the ene] and I have always been Juanpe,” he replies in English, of course.
"And I'm not going to stop being Juanpe, no matter who says so."
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