Giro d'Italia Begins!

This is the day we’ve all been waiting for. The most anticipated Grand Tour of 2011 has finally begun and I have some excellent content to share with you. I’m still on vacation in Thailand and internet is painfully slow, but I’ll be doing my best to post every day so none of this goes to waste.

First of all, long time contributing photographer Veeral Patel has quit his job to pursue his dream of becoming a professional cycling photographer. Veeral will be sending photos on most days as well as documenting his own experiences at the Giro. I’ll be posting some of his photos here, but you can go to his site (O’nev) to read about his journey.

Stefano Sirotti is also covering his hometown tour sending in his usual excellent photos along with his team of photographers. RCS, the Giro race organiser also has dozens of photographers scouring the streets of Italy who are contributing their photos. I wish the ASO provided these types of images.

The most exciting and insightful thing we’ll get to read about on most days is Cam Meyer’s diary on his second third Giro d’Italia. Cam will also be posting daily videos of behind the scenes stuff whenever he gets a chance. I don’t know how where this kid gets so much energy from. If he keeps this up he’ll put mainstream media out of a job!

Cam’s Giro Diary

Today was the start of my third Grand Tour. An opening 20km flat and fast Teams Time Trial was install and our Garmin Cervelo guys were excited and ready to go. We knew our team was not full of time trialists but we were still confident with the riders we had that we could put in a good performance.

We rode the course a couple of hours before our start time and checked out the corners and best lines to take for the smoothest ride. It was a rough course in places with a fair few tram tracks to cross and holes to avoid so we needed to have our wits about us.

After warming up on the ergo trainers we headed to the start ramp. I was given the job of leading the team off and setting the pace for the first 700 meters. Our plan was to have everyone rolling through for as long as they could until they blew. We were waiting for no one and going pretty much full gas from the start.

We ended up having not the best ride as it was hard for our non TT specialist to sit the pace with riders such as David Millar and Tyler Farrar. Towards the end for the final 7km or so we were down to 5 men which is the minimum needed to set a time. It was hard to hold the pace from then on but full credit to the team we were still good enough for 5th place only 3 seconds off third and this shows some of the guys have good form for the upcoming stages.

It was a proud day to lead the team off in the Green and Gold bands and we were rode to our limit today but it just was not good enough for a top three result. Looking forward to the sprint stages as we try to get Tyler Farrar a stage win in the next week.

Until Tomorrow. Ciao.

Photos

Courtesy of Veeral Patel, Sirotti and RCS

Results

1 HTC-Highroad 0:20:59
2 Team RadioShack 0:00:10
3 Liquigas-Cannondale 0:00:22
4 Omega Pharma-Lotto
5 Team Garmin-Cervelo 0:00:24
6 Lampre-ISD
7 Rabobank Cycling Team 0:00:26
8 Saxo Bank Sungard 0:00:30
9 Sky Procycling 0:00:37
10 Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team
11 Movistar Team 0:00:38
12 Androni Giocattoli 0:00:39
13 BMC Racing Team 0:00:41
14 Leopard Trek 0:00:42
15 Quickstep Cycling Team
16 AG2R La Mondiale 0:00:49
17 Pro Team Astana 0:00:50
18 Geox-TMC 0:00:53
19 Colnago-CSF Inox 0:01:02
20 Katusha Team 0:01:04
21 Farnese Vini-Neri Sottoli 0:01:07
22 Acqua & Sapone
23 Euskaltel-Euskadi 0:01:13

General Classification after Stage 1

1.Marco Pinotti (Ita) HTC-Highroad 0:20:59
2 Lars Ytting Bak (Den) HTC-Highroad
3 Kanstantsin Sivtsov (Blr) HTC-Highroad
4 Mark Cavendish (GBr) HTC-Highroad
5 Craig Lewis (USA) HTC-Highroad
6 Robbie McEwen (Aus) Team RadioShack 0:00:10
7 Tiago Machado (Por) Team RadioShack
8 Fumiyuki Beppu (Jpn) Team RadioShack
9 Bjorn Selander (USA) Team RadioShack
10 Robert Hunter (RSA) Team RadioShack