After the Giro d'Italia's third stage on Monday, the riders faced a short transfer over to the mainland for Tuesday's stage. Nice and easy, right? Well, not really.
"We have a 90-minute transfer with the ferry and then have to drive to the hotel. It will be very late and our regeneration will, of course, suffer," complained Gerolsteiner's Johannes Fröhlinger on radsport-news.com. "So the riders are angry. Just hope that the ferry doesn't forget anyone."
Well, don't be surprised if you see David Millar, Ryder Hesjedal and Christian Vande Velde of Team Slipstream late at the start today. "After the finish we were supposed to get on buses and be taken to ferries," Millar noted on the team's website, slipstreamsports.com. "We showered in a building that resembles a prison. Then the buses are full so we're left there in a parking lot. They put me, Ryder and Christian in cars with the mechanics to go back with them as this will be quicker.
"So we thought. This proves to be a mistake as we end up going to another port and have no idea what's going on. Eventually we get going by which time the other guys are on a different boat from another port! It's now 22:11 and we're still in the car," he said.
Millar was involved in one of the yesterday's crashes, in a rather odd way. "Forty kilometres from the finish, there was a massive pile up. Miraculously I didn't hurt myself, but the impact was so great it ripped my foot out of my shoe. That was a first. I was left tiptoeing through the bodies and bikes looking for my shoe. Surreal."
At least one of Fröhlinger's Gerolsteiner team-mates was involved in the day's crashes, but that was a rider who has had more than his share of crashes. Andrea Molette went down early in the race. "Since his bad crash in Milano-Sanremo last year, where he broke his leg, he is always a bit worried when it starts to rain. Today's crash surely set him back mentally. We'll have to build him back up." (SW)
