Snow and sickness: The challenges of the 2013 Giro d’Italia

Things have take a turn for the unexpected here at the Giro d’Italia. We are taking an unplanned third rest day due to snow at the high altitudes, especially on the Gavia and Stelvio climbs that were supposed to feature in Stage 20.

Since my last post, things have been very up and down. Shortly after the first rest day, I came down with the illness that has been ripping through the pel0ton. The race’s mix of foul weather and tired bodies has been taxing our immune systems. For a few days, I was quite rough: sinuses blocked, coughing up a lung and some nice hot/cold sweats at night. But it wasn’t as if I was the only one. I have never heard so much coughing in a peloton.

Slowly things started to get better though. The second rest day really helped things along. I was feeling much better again and managed to get in the break on Stage 16 with my teammate Pieter Weening. The director had asked me to try to get up the road with Pieter and support him throughout the day. The plan was to give him a real crack at the final climb before the finish. The break was a big group, 22 riders. It allowed Pieter to sit on for most of the day while I worked. Unfortunately, we also had a rider who was only 10 minutes behind in the general classification. The teams trying to protect their top 10 places in the GC eventually chased down our break. In the end, it was about 200 km of wasted effort but we had to give it our best go as you never know what can happen.

Friday, the stage has been cancelled because all the climbs are covered in snow. The white stuff fell all the way down to only 500 m in elevation. It’s a shame to have to cancel a stage and sometimes I have wonder what the organizers have in mind. The forecast has been calling for snow for more than a week now. The TV has been filled with images of three-metre snow banks on the Gavia and Stelvio. OK, the organizers did make a Plan B, but that plan still had us going over passes only a few hundred metres in elevation. Perhaps a better Plan B would have been to have a flatter stage in the valley organized somewhere close rather than run the risk of total cancellation? I don’t think there will be to much complaining from the group though as we have really been worn down by this year’s Giro. The weather has made world’s hardest race a truly  testing event. Two more days to go!

Christian Meier is also taking a photo a day at the 2013 Giro (like the one at the top of this article). See the complete collection to date.

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