ITALY: Colombian rider Egan Bernal beat Italy’s Damiano Caruso by 1 min 29 sec to win the first Grand Tour of the cycling season, the Giro d’Italia and secure the Maglia Rosa. Britain’s Simon Yates came third. Filippo Ganna wins stage 21 time trial in Milan and the only rider in history to have won five consecutive Giro time trials. Egan Bernal is also the winner of the 2019 ‘Tour de France’.
The 21st Stage
Damiano Caruso of team Bahrain-Victorious secured second position overall with a respectable time of 35-11, while Simon Yates of Bike Exchange came third. Filippo Ganna quickly collected a new bike after disposing off the old one due to flat tyre limiting his losses to less than 20 seconds and crossing the line in 33-48, the fastest time set so far. Cavagna unfortunately crashed his bike inside the final kilometre but managed to get back on and secured second position with Affini coming third.
This year’s Giro d’Italia
184 riders from 19 World Tour teams and four Pro Teams participated in the 104th edition of the 2021 Giro d’Italia. The race started on May 8, in Turin and concluded in Milan on May 30. This edition of the Giro d’Italia was full of heritage and history. With seven major mountain stages and two stages with gravel sections, dips into Slovenia and then Switzerland during stages, riders at the 2021 Giro d’Italia covered a total of 3,479 kilometres over 21 stages, with two individual time trials.
90 years of Maglia Rosa
The 2021 Giro d’Italia also commemorates the 700th death anniversary of Dante. The final words of Dante’s ‘Purtagorio’ is printed on the inside of the collar of Maglia Rosa, the legendary Pink Jersey that is celebrating 90 years of its creation this year.
On May 28, RCS Sport celebrated 90 years of the Maglia Rosa with a video mapping display at the Piazza Duomo, Milan. The event was supported by Enel, the main sponsor of the Maglia Rosa since 2016.
An idea that started the game
In 1908, the sports daily La Gazzetta Dello Sport was going through a financial crisis and was in a lookout of a solution. Armando Cougnet, a sports journalist with La Gazzetta Dello Sport, came up with an idea of cycling tournament that will be an effective a marketing tool to bring out the newspaper from red. So, the first Giro d’Italia tournament was held on May 13, 1909 with 127 enthusiasts racing for the 8 stage, 2448 km tournament. Luigi Ganna was the first Giro d’Italia’s winner.
Till date, Eddy Merckx, Fausto Coppi, Alfredo Binda won the race 5 times each. Tao Geoghegan , the British cyclist who currently rides for UCI World Team Ineos Grenadiers won the 2020 Giro d’Italia.
The final jersey line up looked like the Columbian star rider, Egan Bernal of team Ineos Grenadiers wearing the Pink, while Peter Sagan of team Bora-Hansgrohe wearing the Purple jersey. Geoffrey Bouchard of team Ag2r-Citroën wears the Blue jersey followed by Egan Bernal again with White jersey.
The Final general classification for Giro d’Italia is as follows:
- Egan Bernal of Ineos Grenadiers at 86-17-28
- Damiano Caruso of Bahrain Victoriou, at 1-29
- Simon Yates of Team Bike Exchange at 4-15
- Aleksandr Vlasov of Astana-Premier Tech at 6-40
- Dani Martínez of Ineos Grenadiers at 7-24
- João Almeida of Deceuninck – Quick-Step at 7-24
- Romain Bardet of team DSM at 8-05
- Hugh Carthy of team EF Education-Nippo at 8-56
- Tobias Foss of Team Jumbo-Visma at 11-44
- Dan Martin of Israel Start-Up Nation at 18-35
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