• Giro.The cyclists stand and force to cut the marathon stage

This Friday's stage, 258 completely flat kilometers between

Morbegno and Asti

, appeared on the Giro route since it was announced, exactly one year ago.

Beyond its forced relocation on the calendar due to the pandemic, the stage had not suffered any alteration in these 12 months.

In other words, all the cyclists were aware that this third-to-last day of the Giro would come sooner or later, with its long mileage, with the accumulated fatigue of a hard day before, with the expectation that the next day would be even worse -although finally not. It will be - and with the possibility that the weather conditions weren't idyllic.

[Narration and classifications]

Well, knowing all these conditions, the peloton decided this Friday morning that

it was not going to complete the stage

as planned.

Basically, because it was very long, because it rained a lot and because everyone has already accumulated 18 stages in their legs.

They went to the control of firms and then they planted themselves, sheltered under the tents that are deployed during the exits.

They were not going to start and they made it known to the organization, headed by the race director, Mauro Vegni.

Faced with such blackmail, the Giro was forced to find a meeting point and ended up

cutting the stage in half

.

From 256 kilometers it was passed to about 125, placing the new exit in Abbiategrasso, which was a priori a transit town.

"We requested it yesterday [for Thursday], since the stage was excessively long and with a lot of rain for our immune system, weakened by the pandemic," explained Adam Hansen, a Lotto runner who served as de facto leader of the protest, in representation of the Association of Professional Cyclists (CPA

Mauro vegni

"We have heard about the protests of the cyclists an hour before the start of the stage. We have not accepted their decision, we have suffered it," Vegni corrected, very angry about everything that happened.

"We have carried out the Giro in a very difficult situation due to the health emergency, guaranteeing the work of riders and teams. This hurts them and cycling.

I am furious, it is a great lack of respect

. Now we focus on reaching Milan, but someone will pay for what happened ", also commented the director of the Giro at RAI.

All this spectacle causes serious damage to the Giro, not only in terms of image, but also financially, as there have been cities that have paid for the Giro to pass through their streets and it has not.

And all this after a very difficult edition, in which several positives by covid put the continuity of the test in check and in which the decisive stage today had to be reformulated due to the health restrictions imposed by the French authorities.

Several directors, including those of

Groupama and Bardiani

, publicly disagreed with the blackmail of the cyclists.

"When you compete in a three-week race, you know what there is. As I usually tell my runners, nobody forces you to be professional cyclists," Marc Madiot, Groupama sports director, told L'Équipe.

To top it off, the stage was completely uninteresting, already for purely sporting reasons.

A 14-runner breakout formed at the start of the actual outing that seemed doomed for neutralization sooner or later.

Sagan's Bora began to set a pace of control and hunting, with the condition that this Saturday they will have to defend the places in the general of Konrad and Majka, but nobody helped them.

Not even Démare's Groupama, the undisputed dominator of the sprints in this Giro.

So with 50 kilometers to go, Bora pulled away and the peloton reached the finish line at the smooth pace of the leader's Sunweb.

He did it at 11:43 am from the Czech Josef Cerny (CCC), winner of the stage.

Of course, there were no changes to the overall and this Saturday, in the triple ascent to Sestriere, Kelderman, Hindley and Geoeghegan Hart will battle to be the leaders before the decisive time trial on Sunday.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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