Light Followed Sound
Week two at the Giro
Week two of this Giro began with the sound of roller-blinds. The light followed the sound, which isn’t usually how physics works. But this is the Giro.
The shutters lifted with a tinny grind of electric gears to allow pale sunlight to fill another white-walled box of a room, in another hotel. After it had shuddered to a halt, I stepped up to the window. There was a little balcony, with a plastic chair, a plastic table, and an almost-clean ashtray that must have been in sporadic use since 1995. Beyond my little balcony overlooking a fire exit was another hotel with another grandiose name, and just visible in the distance, a tiny scrap of Tyrrhenian Sea. Enough perhaps to patch a rip in a pair of jeans.
Massa, to the north of Camaiore, is a classic of the Tuscan riviera. An endless string of bars and restaurants, as far as the eye can see, all displaying their concession number. The sun loungers and still-folded parasols, arranged in grids with mathematical precision, await the arrival of the Austrians and the Germans, the Russians, Dutch and British. The sand mostly untrodden, its darker fringes stroked by little parodies of waves, miniature breakers tickling the shore. I set off to run for half an hour out, and then half an hour back, noting the number of the concession that was my starting point, so that I didn’t overshoot on my return, adding unnecessary distance. 88. Il Pirata.
Running south towards Camaiore, I was passed in the opposite direction by other joggers; staff members from a selection of Giro teams. A Movistar mechanic (no idea, really but he looked like a mechanic), followed by a couple of Decathlon chaps, a trio of very young Pic Nic Post NL types (social media creators?) and finally a lone Uno-X operative, grizzly, tanned, Norwegian and serious. Only later did it occur to me that this had almost certainly been Thor Hushovd. I remembered how, when he was a rider, his Mum and Dad used to follow the Tour de France in their campervan, park up outside each Crédit Agricole team hotel, and cook him his favourite minced beef and potato dinner.
Back in my hotel, I passed the first proper rest day tentatively dipping a toe into the churning waters of the rest of my life. First, I arranged for a courier to pick up the passport I left in a hotel in Abruzzo and send it on to Milan. Then I tried to catch up on everything else. Family, friends, my writing work, plans for July, other races I have committed to and a dozen other obligations, all on hold for the passage of the Giro. I could only look at the inbox on my laptop by deliberately squinting to defocus the words, or else turning my head away at an angle and glimpsing the emails as one might address any object of fascination and disgust. There is room for next to nothing in the cognitive load of a Grand Tour. And, with the exception of one single jet-lagged night in Lewisham, I have now been in perpetual motion already for 6 weeks: Hainan, Belgium, Benin, Bulgaria, Italy… When evening fell in Massa, and the roller-blinds descended as the moon rose, I fell into a deep sleep in which I dreamt of Enric Mas.
I woke, 8 hours later, with the phrase ‘Leaner, but is he meaner?’ rattling around my head. Had I used these words in commentary? Had I read them somewhere? Were they somehow linked to Enric Mas? Disturbed by visions of the Movistar rider’s contortions, I went down to the misery of an Italian breakfast, to stand, arms limply at my side, and gaze at the dismal offering of room temperature yoghurts, stale cakes, sweating slices of banana-yellow processed cheese, and cheese-coloured bananas. It was time trial day. A beige concept at best.
Was it all that bad? Not really. But there was a middle hour and half when no one was even trying for a top ten, when the clock ticked by very slowly indeed. The course, an overly extended version of the opening TT of Tirreno Adriatico, and a still further zoomed-out coastline amplification of my run the previous day, was not of much interest. Ganna ripped its head off, and Jacopo and I started to try and place him in the pantheon of all time greats. Were it not for Fabian Cancellara’s brilliance in the monuments, then he would probably already be the greatest - and who knows what classics he might yet win? As Jacopo pointed out, Cancellara wasn’t racing in the Era of Freaks. Ganna is. And he is one of them. Ganna on a TT bike is like no else on earth. He has Tony Martin’s muscularity (and more), Cancellara’s horrible power, but with poise and souplesse of Wiggins. He has it all.
