Our man Philip Deignan found himself up the road at the Giro d'Italia again yesterday, the Letterkenny man going clear in a 26 strong group on stage 17 to Vittorio Veneto.
Wednesday May 28th
Stage 17: Sarnonico to Vittorio Veneto (208km)
By Philip Deignan
A mainly flat stage with three short sharp hills towards the end, today looked perfect for our sprinter Ben Swift. So the team plan this morning was to try and let a small group up the road early on.
Ideally, three or four riders would go clear and we would keep them on a short leash, controlling the tempo at the head of the peloton before hopefully bringing it back together so that Ben could have a go in the sprint finish.
As it turned out, it would have been a perfect day for Swifty, but after about 20km it was obvious that it wasn’t going to be possible to control anything.
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Everybody knew that today was the last day for a lot of guys, especially the non climbers, to get into the breakaway and it was pretty full on, with streams of attacks for about 80km, before a group went.
Today was never going to be a finish that suited me, so for the first 25km or so I didn’t even try to get up the road and just sat in.
After a while though I could see that the guys who’d been following a lot of moves like Bernie (Eisel) and Salvatore (Puccio) were getting tired, so I went up the front just to give them a hand to follow the bigger groups.
Eventually though, a group of 26 riders got clear and I found myself in it. Ideally, it would have been one of the other guys in that group, but when you’re up there you try and do what you can.
The hardest part of the day was the start, the all out attacking of the first two hours. Once we got a gap the breakaway group was so big that it was pretty easy just to roll through, which we did until the attacks started towards the end.
Although Tim Wellens of Lotto was first to jump off the front, he was only going for the mountains points on the second of three fourth category climbs with 45km to go.
Having drunk plenty during the stage, I felt like I needed a pee at that stage but there were crowds all along both sides of the road so I had nowhere to go.
The first real attack came from Thomas De Gendt of Omega Pharma Quickstep 15km later and although I was still bursting, my pee stop was put on hold indefinitely.
De Gendt was really strong and opened up a 16 second gap pretty quickly but behind him it was really messy in our group.
There were a lot of teams that had two or three guys in there and once Wellens, Jay McCarthy (Tinkoff-Saxo), Matteo Montaguti of Ag2r and Stefano Pirazzi of Bardiani went across to the Dutchman on the last climb it was quite hard to get organised and get a chase going.
I didn’t really have the legs on the steep Muro di ca del Poggio climb 20km from the finish. It was too explosive for me and as the attacks came, I struggled a little bit on it.
It had started to rain in the last 40km so it was really slippery on the hill too. Any time I got out of the saddle, my back wheel started sliding so I had a fair idea it was going to be treacherous going down the descent.
On the way down, I didn’t take any crazy risks, just followed the wheels, keeping my head up to try and anticipate anything that might happen a few bike lengths ahead of me.
On the wet roads quite a few guys crashed out of the break. Simon Geschke of Giant Shimano crashed on a bend on the descent and I saw Caruso and a few others picking themselves up off the ground later on.
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With 12km to go and the gap out to 20 seconds, I attacked, but De Gendt’s teammate Serge Pauwels followed me.
As he had a man up the road, he wasn’t obliged to help me get across the gap. I didn’t have the horsepower to do it on my own so I was soon reeled in.
Pauwels did a good job for De Gendt today. He jumped on pretty much everything that moved and stopped a lot of little groups from going anywhere.
Like I said earlier though, the finale of the stage wasn’t really my speciality and it was always going to be hard to get a decent gap with so many powerful, explosive guys in the group and some of their teammates in the break.
The next time I attacked, I thought I was at the back of the group when I jumped but Johan Le Bon from FDJ came with me. Even with two of us riding though, we were brought back fairly quickly.
Once you have guys in the chase group who have teammates up the road; if they’re doing their job right, they can shut things down pretty quickly.
I knew with a couple of kilometres to go that nobody was going to get across to the front five and with guys like Oss and a few other fast guys still there I wasn’t expecting miracles in the sprint.
All of the attacking had split our chase group in two but just before the final sprint the second half suddenly got back on, we were swamped and I eventually finished 16th on the stage.
For a lot of the guys in that group, today was the last chance saloon for a stage win, but for a climber like me hopefully it won’t be.
I felt pretty good today and was surprised to feel so well recovered after yesterday’s epic in the snow.
I was expecting the cold to take more out of me but I was happy enough with the way I felt today so hopefully tomorrow’s mountain stage and the penultimate stage to Zoncolan are still days where I can have another go.
When I crossed the finish line today there was an anti doping officer waiting on me to give a urine sample. I was almost delighted when he asked me. I’d been holding one in for the last 40km.
Sometimes, if you’re dehydrated or have gone for a pee recently, anti-doping can take ages after a stage. You end up missing the team bus, traveling to the hotel on your own and arriving a lot later than everyone else.
Not today. The doctor said he’s never seen a control done so quickly.
I was in and out and sitting on the team bus before the bunch arrived.
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