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THE GROM REPORT #4 - GIRO D'ITALIA... |
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 Words: Kris Withington...
Kris - aka Grom - is from Rotorua and is a mechanic with Garmin-Transitions, the cycling team that features another local Julian Dean.
Kris is reporting every month or so from inside the world of the European pro cycling tour.
• Tales from Pro Tour #3...Grom on the Autumn Classics...
And more on Kris • BIKE WIZARD...Thanks to Rotorua Daily Post
Photo: (thanks to Team Garmin): Tyler Farrar wins stage 10 of Giro 2010 after the perfect lead out from Julian Dean (on right).
I recently completed my fifth ‘Grandie’, the Giro d’Italia or Tour of Italy.
Not as a rider, as a staff member, of course.
The Giro is one of the three Grand tours on the seasonal calendar. The two others are Vuelta Espana and the Tour de France. What makes these races ‘grand’ (or ‘Grandies’ as the Aussies call them) is they are 3 weeks long. Yep, that’s right, a bike race that is 3 damn weeks long, usually with 22 stages and 2 rest days.
I always wonder why these ‘Grandies’ don’t get more general media attention outside of Europe.
Of course, the bike media are all over them like a rash. But I would think the general public would be more interested in following these poor men dragging their bodies over more than 3200km over 22 stages. That’s an average of about 145kms a day (according to my computer calculator) through rain hail and sleet, baking sunshine - not to mention the dozen or so alpine passes.
All for the sake of overall victory or a sneaky stage win.
A ‘Grandie’ is hard, very hard. If you enjoy riding your bike and have a bit of spare time on your hands, go out and try riding a thousand kilometres a week for 3 weeks.
Let me know how you feel after the first week and we can see how you are getting on.
I would think the extreme physical nature of these races would appeal to the TV sports junkie with the allure of extraordinary physical feats and equally extraordinary physical suffering.
But, alas. No. Unless a rider catapults himself off the side of a mountain pass or causes a mass pile up in the peloton thundering towards the finish line, these events hardly ever seem to make the 6.40pm sports news.
Incidentally, Rotorua’s Julian Dean (from Team Garmin-Transitions) completed all 3 grand tours last year, the only rider in the professional peloton to do this in 2009.
A three-week Grandie turns out to be really five weeks for the mechanics.
We gather in the service course (the team’s warehouse) and spend 5 or 6 days assembling new bikes and wheels and preparing the warehouse on wheels, the team truck.
We leave for the city the race start is in a week before the first stage to arrive stress-free and make sure all the equipment is ready to go.
Then it’s onto the race and into the ‘bubble’. The race is all you think about. You eat with the same people, do the same job and move onto the next hotel, every day.
You have no idea what is going on in the outside world. Television is never great watching and the Internet is still a pipe dream in some backcountry hotels in the depths of Europe.
When you have come out of the bubble, it turns out there has been a plane crash in Africa, oil going everywhere in the Gulf of Mexico and a couple of politicians misbehaving with our money.
• INTERVIEW WITH GROM...check out a chat with Kris on Pez Cycling News.
• TEAM GARMIN WEBSITE
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