The official list of Giro numbers is announced and frowns are frowned in Turin, where the race kicks off today. It turns out that the one who wears Deceuninck number 1 -which is number 91-, the one that each team assigns to its leader, is not Joao
Almeida
but Remco
Evenepoel
. Patrick Lefevere, the head of the Belgian team, an old dog like no other, knows that in this way he instills fear and uncertainty among those who believed - if there was any - what the young phenomenon said that the Giro came to enjoy after so long stopped due to injury , flirting first with death and then with depression, and helping his Portuguese partner, one of the sensations of the last edition.
Nobody trusts Evenepoel, because despite not having competed since he plunged down a Lombardy embankment on August 15, despite the fact that this is his first presence in a three-week lap, the wonder boy of cycling is governed by different logics from everyone else. No one would even see it possible that a runner with these conditions could win the initial 8.6 kilometer time trial and keep the pink jersey until the 29.4 which awaits at the end of the 30th, in Milan. But with Evenepoel everything is possible, even a rebirth as hyperbolic as the one narrated.
Obviously, the 21-year-old Belgian departs without any pressure, since favoritism falls on other proper names.
Especially in two, the only ones - along with the already veteran Vincenzo
Nibali
- among the 184 participants who boast of having a great lap in their record, absent the winner of the last Giro, Tao Geoghegan Hart and also Primoz Roglic, Tadej Pogacar or Geraint Thomas .
On the one hand,
Egan Bernal
presents the candidacy
, winner of the 2019 Tour. As usual, Ineos has assembled a dream block -Sivakov, Martínez, Ganna, Castroviejo ...- around their leader, whose asterisk is his back.
He had to leave the last Tour suffering from severe pain and, despite his good performance in spring, he acknowledges that the discomfort persists.
If he is healthy, it is difficult for him to have a rival.
The other big favorite is the 2018 Vuelta winner,
Simon Yates
. The Briton has not since reached the brightness of that triumph and also comes from a complicated 2020, in which the covid separated him from the Giro. Like Bernal, the route of this edition favors him, with less than 40 kilometers of time trial and many high mountain stages, especially in a terrifying final week.
Behind them contains an extensive list of favorites that includes
Jay Hindley
-second the last year,
Joao Almeida
-fourth-, Hugh Carthy, Emmanuel Buchmann, Aleksandr Vlasov and, of course,
Mikel Landa
. The Spaniard has decided this year to bet on the Giro as the main objective of the course, for which he has thoroughly prepared during the spring.
Pello Bilbao -
fifth last year - will be his best lieutenant and also an excellent alternative plan for Bahrain if Landa fails. The other great Spanish candidate for the podium is
Marc Soler
, who makes his debut as Movistar's leader in a great lap.
In sprints, the big unknown is
Dylan Groenewegen
.
The Dutchman has been inactive on suspension since the Tour of Poland accident in August last year that nearly cost
Fabio Jakobsen
his life
.
The doubts with him have more to do with psychological issues than physical ones.
Caleb Ewan
,
Giacomo Nizzolo
,
Peter Sagan
and
Fernando Gaviria
will be his main rivals in the volatas.
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