Landa accelerates in Santa Cristina, but does not remove the favorites of the Giro d'Italia from the neck

There is soccer prose and soccer poetry, wrote Pasolini, already a centenarian, and he spoke of the geometric and flat Italy of the 70s, and of the Brazil of Pelé and Gerson, Rivelinho and Tostao, fantasy, instinct, and a taste for the impossible, the brilliant gesture that it grabs and destroys, which makes one exclaim, oh, and moan, and Pasolini also liked cycling, a fan of Merckx, of Van Looy, the fixed stars of the cycling firmament, he wrote, of Taccone, committed proletarian, sport of peasants and workers, that it's over, write in 69 now.

The poet from Bologna who played football in the wastelands of Rome succumbing to accelerated construction, died in 1975, would have liked Marco Pantani, a corsair, his lyric of despair, wild, and those who try to imitate him suffer , prose writers of heavy prose, regular, Indurain, and a smooth electrocardiogram, and on the

which is how the Giro has been baptized the ascent to the Santa Cristina forest by the Valico, below

[red from Lombardy] between stone walls, vertical terraces where not even mules can climb, and buckwheat plants, above, some fir trees, and a very steep road, Landa seeks inspiration in his Pirata, in his leaps of heart.

And her heart already starts racing, restless.

A few meters before, he bumped into his partner Pello Bilbao, he lost his rhythm, seconds of panic, heart in his mouth, goodbye calm, clarity.

Welcome to the ragged breathing, the end of the dream that is dreamed within another dream.

The stage is impossible, it will be for the Czech Jan Hirt, one of the escape of 23 in which Valverde also tried impossible metaphors and free verses, and found no plot, no rhyme.

Hirt is the same one who already came second, after Ciccone, in the last Mortirolo, on 19. The rose is there, at 59s and three rivals in between, Carapaz, Hindley, Almeida.

And Juanpe, much further.

He holds on until the Lebrija native can't take it anymore, who gave in in Santa Cristina 7m 15s, and is already eleventh overall.

Hands down, ass up

Hands down, ass up, perfect image, Pantani with hair and a helmet, and a clean look, without glasses, Landa accelerates in the lead.

It is the beauty of innocence, the cyclist who seeks his own freedom in the only way he knows how, fighting freely for victory.

Poetry, screams the fans, sibilant poetry, snake poetry, soft, inspiration, instinct, vein poetry that floods the senses,

... Landa doesn't tear off his earpiece.

She doesn't break free.

Her ugliness binds him.

Look back.

They are followed by two, the strongest, Hindley, surprisingly lively, easy to pedal, light;

Carapaz, in pink, heavier.

Behind, and it seems that it moves away, fades, blurs, Almeida's white shadow chases.

The prose does not give up.

They have turned left.

Last six kilometers, the hardest in the entire port, in the entire Giro, add the commentators.

Hindley, Carapaz, Landa, take turns accelerating, looking for the weakness of their companions, and Landa turns and there is still, on his neck, the white monster.

Almeida, who even seems to be getting closer.

The end of the madness on the hardest ramps.

Ugliness prevails, the triumph of petty-bourgeois fear, savings, accounting, the sprint for 4s bonus (and Hindley wins, always).

The pact.

Bad times for the epic.

Landa talks with Carapaz, with Hindley.

The fight is over.

The enemy is Almeida, they conclude, one who beats all three of us in the time trial.

It is better to relieve him in agreement and leave him far away.

There will be an occasion for our verses, they conclude, the Marmolada waterfalls, on Saturday;

the Vetriolo, a name that scares, and, above all, the Menador, a slope that takes your breath away, on Wednesday, towards Lavarone, through the crack of Trento.

Prose is the road book, maps and graphs, names, places, mountains, in which cyclists, always children, cyclists who run their fingers find resonances, evocations, seek inspiration.

The directors, former cyclists, always fearful old people, find there security, control, and, always, always, always, the depressing tagline that goes back to the night of the Tours that there are more days, look what hardest stages are left...

“We have done what we had studied, what had to be done”, says Alberto Volpi, the director of Landa, who, faithful to the manuals, makes his team accelerate on the climb to Teglio, an ambush to attack not to regulate, and then, in the painted part of Santa Cristina to prepare for Landa's acceleration, and they run with blinders, and do not take advantage of Nibali's madness, the Shark of Messina's tribute to Judge Giovanni Falcone, assassinated 30 years and one day ago by the Mafia in Capaci, on the Palermo highway.

For Nibali, it is such a moral duty to remember every year the day that his Sicily will never forget how to attack whenever a relegation can revolutionize a race.

He does it by going down the steepest Mortirolo to Mazzo.

Nine arrive together at the base.

Carapaz only has one domestique, Sivakov;

Landa has two, Pello and Poels;

Almeida, one, Formolo;

Hindley, two, Buchmann and Kämna… The next verse should be one of attack, to continue fast.

The logic of the prose writers, fear, imposes, however, to stop, wait for the retarded to arrive, four Ineos that annihilate uncertainty, rebuild, start again.

"No, at that moment I was not afraid, there was a lot left and I knew we would remake ourselves," says Carapaz, who knows what cloth victories are made with, with bonuses, with seconds, the days when the epic dies.

You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on