Our man Philip Deignan says he is constantly surprised that more fans don't get hurt by the side of the road on the Giro d'Italia and races like it.
Saturday May 24, Stage 14: Aglie to Oropa (164km)
By Philip Deignan
When you're two weeks into a three-week stage race, it's amazing the little things that make a difference.
Team Sky morale got a huge boost this morning when a jar of Nutella made an unexpected re-appearance at the breakfast table.
There’s always a big selection of stuff on the table every morning but the Nutella has been missing since Belfast as somebody on the team, most likely a nutritionist, decided it probably wasn’t the ideal way to start your day.
I don’t eat Nutella anyway, so it didn’t bother me, but for a lot of the guys it’s part of their morning ritual, so when it disappeared they were fairly pissed off about it.
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But they were pretty happy about its reappearance this morning and there were pretty good vibes at breakfast this morning.
As we thought today’s mountain stage was one where a breakaway was likely to succeed, four or five of us were told to try and get in the early moves this morning.
After having spent almost 80km chasing attacks and counter attacks before I eventually made the breakaway the last time though , this morning I gambled on it taking a while to get clear and ignored the first couple of moves of the day.
As luck would have it, the first one was the one that stuck. I was probably 30 or 40 riders back when I saw it going but we had two riders up there so the pressure was off. It was a pity because it would have been a nice break to be in.
As my teammates Dario (Catado) and Eddy (Boassen Hagen) rode off into the sunset with 19 others, the Omega Pharma Quickstep team of race leader Rigoberto Uran setting a steady tempo at the front of the peloton.
Bernie Eisel gives Sky teammate Kastantin Suitsov a helping hand after his crash on stage 14.
After about 35km, we exited a roundabout where the road sort of sharpened inwards and Kosta (Kanstantin Suitsou) hit the deck, landing on his back in the middle of the road.
I didn’t see it happening but judging from who he was shouting at, I think Arashiro from Europcar had something to do with it and there were some words exchanged.
I was riding a few bike lengths behind Kosta and although some people thought I crashed, I didn’t actually fall. I just stopped with him to see if he was okay.
I picked up Kosta’s bike, put his chain back on and tried to get it going again before Bernie (Eisel) came up and told me to go ahead, that he would wait for him.
Kosta is a pretty tough cookie so when he wasn’t back on his bike within seconds, it was pretty obvious that he was in a lot of pain and his back was pretty bad.
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He eventually got up and rode back into the bunch but you could see he was in agony and had to drop back to the race doctor’s car a few times afterwards.
Kosta tried to keep going but was eventually forced to abandon the Giro at the feed zone 50km later and go straight to hospital.
I felt a lot better today and stayed with the front part of the peloton until the final climb, where the speed going into the bottom caught me by surprise and I found myself too far back and missed the split.
I rode up to the finish with Sebastian (Henao) in a six man group and we crossed the line four minutes and 54 seconds after Dario had taken second on the stage.
Our two guys in the break did a great job again today and as Eddy probably knew Dario would have a better chance on the mountain so he sacrificed himself on the way up to get Dario into a good position for the finale.
Just as it looked like Dario would take our first stage win on this Giro though, Italian Enrico Battaglin came from nowhere and snatched victory by inches on the line.
I’m sure, like you always do when you come second, Dario will have mixed emotions this evening and will probably replay the finish in his mind as he lies in bed tonight, but it was a great ride.
Enrico Battaglin takes stage 14 in Oropa yesterday, having caught Team Sky's Dario Cataldo in the last 10 metres to the line.
Dario gave it everything he had. And you can’t do any more than that. Afterwards, we got covered up and rode back down the mountain to the team bus.
With tens of thousands of fans on the roadside and the grupetto and motorbikes still coming up, this is actually the most dangerous part of the day.
You want to get down the mountain as quickly as possible to get showered and changed but sometimes you have to just stay calm because it’s so easy to have an accident.
We saw that side of things today when one of the race marshals was hit by a motorbike at a corner right at the bottom of the last climb.
It didn’t show it on TV but he had his shirt ripped open and they were trying to resuscitate him with a defibrillator when we went past. It’s incredible there aren’t more accidents on races.
Although this time it was a motorbike involved, some fans are really reckless and I’m constantly surprised how they manage to escape being hit by riders or motorbikes, especially on mountain stages.
If you plan on coming to a big race this year, please be careful.
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