Philip Deignan well wrapped up against the elements on the open road in Northern Ireland yesterday; his Monaco training partner Michael 'Bling' Matthews is now in pink.
Saturday May 10th, Stage 2: Belfast to Belfast (210km)
By Philip Deignan
Even though almost everyone on this Giro has been based in Belfast for the last four days, today’s road stage was the first time since we landed in Ireland that we were all together out on the road.
At the start, I caught up with Nicolas Roche and we spent a few minutes talking about Dan Martin’s crash in the team time trial, how unlucky he’s been and how glad we both were to get yesterday over with.
Although we had more rain as we left Belfast, it didn’t seem to stop the crowds coming out today and it was great to see so many people at the start and all along the route again.
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As opening road stages of Grand Tours go, today was pretty calm and a lot less stressful than yesterday.
As soon as everyone realised that the wind wasn’t going to be coming in off the sea and there wasn’t likely to be a danger of it causing splits in the peloton, it made it a bit more relaxed than a normal opening road stage.
When I first turned pro for French team Ag2r in 2005, the peloton was comprised of mainly Spanish, Italian, French or Belgian riders. But now there are so many Australians, Americans and English speaking guys in the bunch that it’s pretty easy to strike up a conversation with the guy next to you as you roll along.
I soon had two Aussie friends of mine; David Tanner of Belkin and Orica GreenEdge’s Michael Matthews, blaming me for the rain and slagging me about the Irish weather in the opening kilometres.
Once we got a couple of hours into the stage however, guys started to get cold, wet and grumpy and the chatter died off.
My hands started to get quite cold just before Bushmills, so I dropped back to the team car and exchanged my gloves for a heavier neoprene pair and picked up a few bottles for my teammates while I was there.
It’s weird, but in wet conditions you always seem to want to stop for a pee more than you would on a normal day.
Even though you’re not drinking that much, a lot of guys would have stopped three or four times today but each team usually makes a point of stopping together, to make it easier to regain contact with the moving peloton.
As more of the sprinters’ teams came to the front of the peloton and the day’s four early escapees began to get reeled in, our Team Sky fast men began to think of the finish and started to shed a few layers of clothes with around 40km to go.
I collected a few rain jackets and gloves from our sprint crew, drifted back to the team car and dropped them off.
I’m not really a lead-out guy so I kind of stay out of all the barging and jostling for position that comes with trying to get your sprinter to the front in the final kilometres.
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To be honest, it’s not something I’m either good at, or used to doing, and in those situations, unless you’re there to do a job and you can do it right, then you’re better off staying out of it.
As the pace increased and the breakaways were caught, our sprinter Ben Swift had teammates Edvald Boassen-Hagen, Bernie Eisel and CJ Sutton to help him while for me and the rest of the guys it was just about staying out of trouble and not losing any time.
In a hectic bunch sprint into Belfast, Ben finished seventh behind stage winner Marcel Kittel of Argos Shimano.
At dinner, we learned that he won the award for the fastest rider over the last 3km.
The prize must be something new at the Giro this year as I’d never heard of it before but it shows that Ben came from quite far back to finish seventh and has to potential to do even better with a bit of luck.
Having started the day on the same time and finished higher than teammate and overnight leader Svein Tuft in the final sprint, my Aussie mate Michael Matthews took over the race leader’s pink jersey for Orica GreenEdge.
Michael lives near me in Monaco and I’ve gotten to know him quite well this year and we often go out training together.
Although he’s knicknamed ‘Bling’ because he likes to wear plenty of nice jewellery and bits and pieces, you’d be mistaken if you passed him off for someone who likes the party lifestyle and doesn’t take things seriously.
Quite the opposite, Michael’s a real down to earth guy and is very serious about his training and racing so it was nice to see him take over as race leader today.
He's in charge now, so if it rains again tomorrow I can blame him.
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