STAGE 9

      It was another thrilling day of unpredictable action and unsung heroes – and yet more skid-pan corners, as leaden skies dropped relentless waves of heavy rain. While Maxim Belkov of Russia broke clear of a breakaway on the penultimate climb, the Vallombrosa, soloing his way to a 44-second clear victory, the peloton was hyperactive with all sorts of attacks and probing moves. ‘It wasn’t super pleasant out there,’ said Danny Pate. ‘It was fast from the start. A couple of different groups formed and then finally we got the breakaway. It was quite big, and having one guy in there – Juan Manuel Garate, who was only 5 minutes down in the GC – the peloton never let it go out very far.

      ‘The two big climbs in the middle were hard, too. When it was time to bridge the gap we stayed together. Any time you have to do a chase, one of the key things is not to panic. We tried to bring our group back to the main group and we managed it right on the Category-3 climb. We had Rigo and Sergio ahead, and everyone else was behind helping Brad. After he got back on, that was it – I was pretty much blown!’

      All eyes were on Wiggins, who had dropped back on the long series of bends off the same mountain Belkov used as his launch pad to victory. Although his team-mates escorted him at pace for 20km to regain contact with the maglia rosa group, questions were arising about whether the British knight had lost his ‘descending mojo’. The toil required to rejoin the group demanded an enormous effort from Wiggins, too. Although he had his Team Sky colleagues to help, he did much of the work himself, leaving himself empty as he struggled to hold on during the day’s final two climbs, shorter and punchier than those that had preceded them, and looked in peril again on the descent from Fiesole.

      ‘I was riding right behind him,’ said Giovanni Visconti. ‘I could see he was handling the descents very badly. I think when it comes to descents he’s now got some kind of mental block.’ You could dismiss that as a bit of psychological warfare from another team, but Christian Knees made a similar observation: ‘Bradley was a little bit nervous downhill. Bad luck with the weather meant the roads were very slippery. He still had confidence in his climbing skills and his ability. He kept fighting. He was the same Bradley, mentally thinking all the time about how to win, but he was a little bit cautious.’ Two days later, Wiggins, never one to make excuses, reflected on his performance and said: ‘Let’s be honest. I descended like a bit of a girl after the crash . . . Not to disrespect girls, I have one at home. But that’s life and we have to push on and deal with the disappointments.’

      ‘Everyone thinks uphill is the big challenge, but downhill can play a big part,’ said Pate. ‘Uphill, you need a good power-to-weight ratio. Downhill, you need to be a bit crazy. Some descents are over 100 km/h. They’re fun, exhilarating, scary, frightening . . . how you take them all depends on who you are. Some guys have way more confidence than skill and ability. Some guys are out of their minds. People think the sprinters are crazy. Some of the downhill guys are crazy, too. Personally, I’m okay downhill, but if I crash it definitely takes me back a notch. It takes me a while to regain confidence. You can get really shaken up – but some guys don’t get shaken up; a crash doesn’t affect them.

      ‘The Giro is an annual race, but every edition has different stages, routes, climbs and descents,’ he continues. ‘Some descents are fast, some are more technical, with tight turns. It’s a real mix, all on one road. I think the Giro is unique in that aspect. A lot of road we’re riding pretty blind. We have profiles, radio information, maps, but there’s always going to be stuff we haven’t raced down. It can be pretty tricky. To my mind, there’s risk and there’s reward, but some guys are definitely big risk-takers. Nibali is known for being good at going downhill, but I’ve seen him crash quite a bit. He crashed twice that same day Brad did, but he doesn’t get shaken up. A guy crashed at the same time, just behind Nibali, and he broke ribs, a scapula and collarbone. That could have been Nibali – out of the Giro, and all for an unnecessary downhill attack.’

      Tellingly, Nibali told Italian TV station RAI afterwards that he had not been exploiting the difficulties Wiggins was encountering because he was unaware of them. His team car had been relegated to last position after a previous rule infraction. By the time BMC and Garmin-Sharp had moved to the front to try and force the pace, Wiggins and Team Sky were already bridging back across.

      So, Wiggins remained in fourth going into the rest day. The day’s big loser was Ryder Hesjedal, who lost more than a minute to his rivals and slipped out of the top ten after being dropped on the final climb. ‘The stage worked out well in the end for us,’ said Ljungqvist. ‘The guys raced as a team, didn’t panic and that was the key. We were able to chase down the gap and we’ve moved up the GC with Rigoberto and Sergio. We have to be happy with that after a hard stage like this.’

       Skip photographs

       STAGE 10

      The race moved to the high mountains of north-east Italy to deliver the first summit finish. The climb to Altopiano del Montasio was new to the Giro – one of those supersteep peaks that Ljungqvist jokes the organisers manage to discover each year – and posed one of the hardest finishes in the race. At the toughest part of the ascent, which lasts about a kilometre, the gradient registered 20 per cent. It was a key stage, the day when the big GC contenders came up against the climbers, with a major reshuffle expected in the overall standings.

      This is where Team Sky’s Colombian riders – Rigoberto Uran and Sergio Henao – come into their element. Both have superb all-round qualities, but explosive climbing is their speciality. While most professional cyclists spend short periods in altitude training camps (where the body adapts to the relative lack of oxygen by increasing the mass of red blood cells that oxygenate the body), many Colombians have a natural physiological advantage as a result of their country’s topography.

      It was no surprise that it was a Colombian 1–2 on the podium at the end of the day, after a stunning solo victory from Urán, who powered off from 8km to go, without getting out of the saddle. Wiggins, meanwhile, saw his team-mate off, but lost touch as the gradient ramped up in that final stretch. He maintained fourth place overall, 1 second behind Urán, losing further time to

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