Fall and abandonment of Tao Geoghegan Hart, the third classified in the Giro d'Italia

Primoz Roglic, wounded, at the finish in Tortona.Marco Alpozzi/LaPresse (LAPRESSE)

The anticyclone is still far away, warns the meteorologist of a Giro as sad as the weather, gray rain, a sun hidden under dark clouds over the agitated Tyrrhenian, which, before reaching the mountains, advances at a pace of blows and misfortunes. Falls and Covid.

An elimination race, summarized by those who turn facts into concepts and speak both of the number of abandonments due to Covid – eight more retired yesterday, four of them from Soudal, Evenepoel's team, which continues with only three cyclists – and Tao Geoghegan Hart, fallen, motionless, sideways on the wet asphalt, knees bent, and recalls his position to the Joseba Beloki, his body after the fall of the Basque in front of Lance Armstrong in a Tour 20 years ago. Tao doesn't get up. His Giro ends in an ambulance (and the first examination in a hospital seems to show a fracture of the left femur), the Giro of the Englishman who was third, just 5s behind his teammate and maglia rosa, Geraint Thomas, and many thought he was the best of the Ineos, better in the mountains than Thomas, and the same in the time trial. Three days after the abandonment of Remco Evenepoel, the pink corsa, so pale, loses another of its favorites 70 kilometers from Tortona, Piedmont, the homeland of the only two Italians who can be called campionissimo, Girardengo, Coppi, where the German Pascal Ackermann wins the sprint ahead of Jonathan Milan and Mark Cavendish.

The rain that floods the regions of the peninsula through which the Giro has just passed falls gently on the coast of Liguria, towards which the peloton descends by the Colla di Boasi. It's only been a few minutes since it started raining. The water mixes with dirt, with the oil of old trucks, with the dust of new asphalt, and it does, explains Thomas, in pink, with 2s on Primoz Roglic and 23s on Joao Almeida, "extremely slippery". In a left-hand corner, he brakes awkwardly and falls in front of him just the Italian Alessandro Covi. "A skate and a good shot," laments the Italian cyclist, Almeida's teammate, who fights for the podium. "These are things that happen." Thomas doesn't have time to slow down. He trips over his body and his bike and also goes to the ground. "I don't know what happened. One fell in front of me and fortunately I fell on top of it. But my colleagues Tao and Sivakov have hurt themselves. And also Roglic fell there," explains the leader of the Giro, one who dropped out in his last two participations in the Italian race. "From a personal point of view I've been lucky, I've landed soft. I've spoken to Roglic. I have seen that he had a good cut on his leg, on his thigh, and that he had it inflamed. I hope he can continue."

Those who follow him in the peloton stick the brakes and go to the ground. He falls half a dozen runners, mostly Ineos, always close to his boss in the head, and also Roglic. Not everyone gets up fast. Thomas, faster than anyone, starts again at full speed. Roglic takes his teammate Bouwman's bike and accelerates after the rose. Tao stays on the ground. And also the French Pyrenean climber Pavel Sivakov, the third man in importance of the team who had everything, except Roglic, to win the Giro.

"Tao was in an optimal position, he was going very strong," laments Thomas, the Welshman who left his country at the age of 20 because he could not stand time and, more philosopher than resigned, contemplates the Italian sky these days so far from his topic, so close to British time, and the 16 kilometers of private beaches that run at the exit of Camaiore converted into a plantation of folded umbrellas, A desolate forest. "Tao has missed a great opportunity to win the Giro again [the Londoner from Hackney has already won the 2020 Giro]. It was a very hard blow for the whole team. I hope he recovers and comes back quickly."

Sivakov, wounded, his team leaves him alone, off the hook, slow. He is only accompanied by an Ineos car and a stewards' bike, which warns the team driver not to even think about giving a hand to his rider, who suffers. They are quickly overtaken by an ambulance on the way to another fall a couple of kilometers ahead. The Navarrese of Movistar Óscar Rodríguez has lost control of his bike at more than 70 per hour, deviates to the ditch where his body collides with a traffic signal that continues to tremble seconds later, when the cyclist lands against the corner of a house built on the road. Rodriguez then began working to end the leak, the most important task of his team. The day was written for the first victory of his boss, Fernando Gaviria, who in the same Tortona achieved his fourth victory in his great Giro, that of 2017. In spite of everything, the team triumphs. The leak is extinguished. Gaviria, no. Gaviria falls two kilometers away.

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