VIAREGGIO – Time suddenly slows down. After the frenzy of the past few days, here is a relatively quiet day. Certainly stress-free. And it's stress-free and a well-deserved rest for Egan Bernal too. People are still working in the hotels. Almost everyone's ride starts around 11 a.m., but perhaps with a little less frenzy. Maybe... At least it's a nice day here, even if tomorrow the weather looks like it will deteriorate and should be unfavorable for those starting in the final stages.
But let's get back to Bernal. The Colombian walks hand in hand with his partner. Then, once he's escorted her to the car, she leaves and he returns to base. He's serene and smiling. This morning he went for a ride on some bikes we'll see in Treviso. He got massages. He chatted a bit with his beloved.. And dinner is coming soon.
Relaxing day
He is serene and smiling and, above all, after a long time He's looking muscular again. Last year he was just skinny. In short, he's a rider.
“I’m fine,” Egan told us. “It’s nice to be back there. Yesterday was a difficult moment for the whole stage: from start to finish».
Meanwhile his mechanics work on the Pinarello Bolide which he'll show off tomorrow in the Lucca-Pisa time trial. Egan will be pushing a 64x11.
Two stages are (almost) a clue: Tagliacozzo and Siena. Clearly, we can't help but start with yesterday's stage, the dirt road one. How beautiful it was to see him there in front in a long and tough stage. Everyone, absolutely everyone, was happy to admire the rider of the Ineos Grenadiers so perky.
«The race plan – Bernal said, referring to the Siena hamlet – was not an exact science at all. We had to be in the lead at the entrance to the first dirt sector and from there on go full throttle. We just had to stay ahead, sector after sector. We managed to finish in a good position. I lacked a bit of power to keep from dropping away from the lead in the final stages, after having spent a lot of energy in the previous kilometers".
Not only that, we discovered a significant detail: Bernal dropped out towards the end because he was most likely dehydrated. When the team car finally arrived on top of him, there were less than 20 kilometers to go. And as soon as they gave him something to drink, he grabbed the canteen almost ravenously. He certainly hadn't had a drink for several quarters of an hour. Imagine the thirst, the dust mixing with his saliva... those must have been terrible sensations.
Bernal is there
The fact is that almost halfway Tour of Italy, tomorrow the Colombian will start in seventh position, 1'10” behind Isaac Del Toro.
“The feeling is good, very good, but you have to go slowly: day by day,” Egan told us.
Colombian journalists, always attentive to their compatriots, are starting to act as they once did. This is no longer the Bernal of recovery. Now the conversation is back to the rider. Another detail. Yesterday, after the Siena stage, he wanted to cool down on his time trial bike... This is what those who aim for the rankings do.
Should he be included in this assault on the podium? Most likely. And the Giro and the spectacle would benefit greatly.Egan for me, without the accident, would have been one of the very few, if not the only one, who could fight with Pogacar on the long climbs».
A word from Ellena
This last sentence is from Giovanni Ellena, the sporting director who had him at the time of Androni Giocattoli, when Bernal arrived in Italy. Ellena, now in force at Polti–VisitMalta, he told us his opinion.
"Seeing Bernal, but also Brendon Rivera, having fun out there, made me really happy. Rivera is his lifelong friend. Egan had suggested him to us at Androni, but he was a complete unknown. He used to ride mountain bikes with him, and yesterday they had fun on the dirt roads, I'm sure of it."
«If we look at it from a psychological perspective, I went through a bit of what Egan went through on my body. And to think that someone would throw himself into doing what he's doing on the streets means he has an impressive mind. Not to mention his physical recovery. Now he's not so much the champion who rides his bike to win, but the one who sets an example for people who have problems. He shows that you can overcome them."
Podium possible?
So what can Egan Bernal actually do in this Giro d'Italia? Can he really fight for the podium? Here too, the technical eye and the one who knows the athlete, Ellena's, come to our aid: "It's hard to say what he can really do," Ellena continues. You have to look at the physique, which is no longer what it used to be. But the mind is. I'm sure of it. It shows. I'll tell you this.
One day I found myself in Madrid going to the Gran Camino, and on the plane I saw a black hat on my seat. In English, I asked the guy to move it. The guy looked up and said, “Hi Giovanni.” It was Egan. At a certain point, I asked him, “How are you?” And he said, “I'm doing pretty well. Let's see what the future holds.” So I looked at him and said, “Your future says that either you become the same as before (or almost), or you stop. Because you are not mediocre.". He told me I was right.
This is to say that Bernal isn't here to ride his bike. Whether he'll then fight for the podium, the win, a top five... I don't know. But he's certainly here to do well."
Ellena then underlines another aspect: the trust from the team. And this is no small feat. Like all greats, Bernal has created his own environment. "Egan now has his trusted masseur, his training partner and his childhood partner. And he's a guy who makes himself loved and respected at the same time."
