Cycling 101: Cycling as a team sport?
We talk a lot of individual cyclists when we talk about a stage. The winner is an individual. But cycling is a team sport. For a grand tour (like the Tour de France or the Giro) a team may be made up of 8 riders. However, as we have seen already, often due to injury teams lose riders over the course of the tour.
Within this team there may be different types of riders (sprinters vs climbers) as well as different roles (team leader vs “domestique.”) A team leader is who everyone in the team is riding for. The domestiques (French for servant) work for the leader to help the leader preserve energy and to set them up for success. This work can range from getting the leader nutrition and water, moving the leader into a certain position, or protecting the leader from headwinds. A leader doesn’t necessarily have to be a GC contender, for example there is Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek. His team works to lead him out properly on the sprint finishes, letting him save his power for the final sprint to the line. However, while one rider gets the glory, all the riders have to ride the stages, go to training camps, spend months away from their families and make the sacrifices for the team.
The fact that many riders spend their careers in service of helping someone else get the win is part of what made Carlos Verona’s win on stage 15 so special. He is a rider who has spent most of his career in service of others, so getting the opportunity to go for a stage win was rare.
The Stage
Today was a fast and short stage, 144 km (90 miles) long and 1,800 meters of climbing with 3 small climbs. The stage traversed through Lombardy, starting in Morbegno and ending in Cesano Maderno. A large breakaway of sprinters got away from the peloton leading up to the final circuit. This is the second to last sprint stage (the last one being on Sunday in Rome.) Today was one of the few true breakaway stages we’ve seen in this year’s Giro; the peloton gave the breakaway 10 minutes of lead time, since no one in the breakaway posed a threat to the GC — giving the peloton a chance to rest up a bit before the big mountain stages of Friday and Saturday.
The final 30 km or so were a technical circuit. The larger breakaway eventually separated into a smaller selection of riders in the penultimate lap of the circuit. While the flat terrain was maybe designed for a sprint, the technical circuit meant that Nico Denz was able to distance the breakaway, with 17 km to go, and cross the finish line alone, giving Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe their first stage win of the Giro. Like Carlos Verona, Nico Denz got the opportunity to race for himself today because of Roglič’s abandon in stage 16. In addition to being a huge achievement for himself, it was also a boon to Red Bull’s Giro. There was no change in the GC.
The Dish
The cuisine of Lombardy is comprised of ingredients we have become familiar with over the past week: cheeses, sausages and salami, meats, and polenta. So I decided to make surullitos which, for my non-Puerto Rican subscribers, are essentially fried polenta sticks. I called up my grandma to get her recipe but instead of using the cheeses my grandma uses I went with Italian cheeses from today’s region.
It was very nice to eat something that reminded me so much of home after cooking new dishes for the past couple weeks. My grandma would make surullitos for any major family gathering, like Thanksgiving and Christmas. So these definitely brought me back and were a real comfort eat! Normally, surullitos are served with mayo-ketchup but I also like them just on their own.
The GC will be decided by Saturday, and the new pope will be greeting the cyclists as they pass through Vatican City on Sunday. It’s going to be a very exciting weekend coming up!