The Kid won the Giro

At the end of a true three week Italian soap opera, the Giro d'Italia went to 22 year old Damiano Cunego. What a turn up for the books! The Kid beat his team captain and two-time(ing) Giro winner Gilberto Simoni, who it has to be said wasn't all that happy about it. Gibo ended up third behind The Kid and Serguei/Serhei/Serhiy/Serge Gonchar/Honchar/Hontchar/Gontchar/Gontsjar/Suit. My knowledge of Ukrainian/Russian transliteration has taken a big leap as you can see. Officially it's Serhei Honchar but I think he's actually of Russian ethnicity and prefers spelling it Gonchar, no matter what the Ukrainian government says.

Back to the soap. In Stage 19, Gibo made a pact with the Devil, a.k.a. Stefano Garzelli, who's on a different team, and the pair attacked on the first climb of the day and effectively isolated The Kid. Gibo needed 3'07 lead over Cunego to win the Giro but luckily for The Kid, G(H)on(t)char worked his arse off to save his second place, so Gibo only ended up gaining 50 seconds. And Garzelli won the stage anyway so poor ol' Gibo got flicked for both the stage win *and* the GC. But he called Cunego a bastard after Stage 18 so he probably deserved it.

It was fun watching all the drama unfold at the end. It made it the least boring Giro for a few years. Still a whole lotta work voor mij en de hele gang.

By the way, the Vittoria Open Corsa CX that I so wisely invested in the other day blew off the rim on Saturday. Oops. Not a good start. I did put 130 psi in it so that was probably a bit much. I'll stick with 23 psi from now on. It rained today. Why does it rain on Sunday?

It's another public holiday tomorrow so I'll race in Bottelare. Hopefully no punctures this time!

Alas, my chocolate icecream investment venture has ended in disaster after all the stocks mysteriously devalued and completely vanished from the fridge. It must be that rat or possum. I will set an even more cunning trap tomorrow after I have replenished the stores. The same thing happened with the vanilla icecream that I bought to replace the chocolate. Strange. There are Evil Forces at work in my fridge. Anyone who has seen it will know what I mean.

I have learned many things this week, aside from Ukrainian/Russian transliteration but I'm too tired now to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......