2021 GIROD ’ITALIA
EGAN BERNAL
A WINNER REBORN
since taking the yellow jersey in the 2019 tour. egan bernai has oeen oeset by injury and doudt. but his comehack win in the 2021 giro d'ltaiia put him hack at the top ot the sport. pmcyciing chronicles his victory, in which supreme climbing strength was underpinned by a formidable team
Writer Barry Ryan
Image Ramon
A hard rain was falling over the Passo Giau when Egan Bernal seemed to end the Giro d’Italia as a contest. Three kilometres from the summit of the pass, at the end of a shortened stage, the Colombian launched a long, seated acceleration that his few remaining rivals could not follow.
Ten metres quickly became 50, and Bernal was alone on the mountainside. The live television images cut out almost immediately after his attack, but that was but a minor detail. We had already seen enough. It was easy to imagine Bernal’s progress from here. The image of ‘un uomo solo al comando’ is stitched into the fabric of the Giro, after all. Bernal was alone, in charge of the race.
On the frigid descent into Cortina d’Ampezzo, the race radio provided sporadic updates of the whereabouts of Bernal’s rivals, but even here, five stages from Milan, the time gaps already felt an irrelevance. Bernal’s actions in the final kilometre, in any case, said rather more about his advantage than the clock.
Bike races are measured in seconds
won and lost, but it’s the grand gestures
that endure. Rather than fight for every
available second, Bernal now slowed,
unhurriedly divesting himself of his
black jacket and tucking it away inside
his maglia rosa. He
frittered away 10
seconds or more in
doing so, and yet it
scarcely appeared to
matter. Creating an
image for posterity
seemed to trump the
urgency of gaining
time in the here and
now. Bernal had
entered the Giro
nursing a nagging
back injury, but
quickly eased into the
posture of the likely winner with a fast
start, winning at Campo Felice on stage
9 and dominating on the gravel of
Montalcino two days later. Now, two
weeks in, he was in a race all of his own
The race radio provided sporadic
updates of the whereabouts of
Bernal’s rivals, but even here,
five stages from Milan, the time
gaps already felt an irrelevance
Bernal alone: the Colombian makes the defining attack of the 2021 Giro on the Giau
THE YOUNG PRETENDER
For 10 days, mind, there had been plenty of observers eager to couch this Giro as a duel between Bernal and another rider also blessed with the promise of youth and similarly burdened by long-term injury. Remco Evenepoel’s Giro debut was postponed last year by the broken pelvis he sustained at Il Lombardia and a troubled rehabilitation meant that his maiden grand tour was also his first race of any description since last August.