Giro, Davide Ballerini dribbles through a crash and gives Italia its first victory

You can't always lose. Finally, on the sixth day, or rather on the sixth stage, the 142 km Paestum-Naples, an Italian rider, Davide Ballerini, a 33-year-old long-distance rider, managed to break the spell by winning in a finale still characterised by the usual rain and crashes that have characterised this wet Giro d'Italia so far.

Ballerini was good because in this umpteenth crash, in a bend 450 metres from the finish (which also involved Jonathan Milan, thus preventing him from participating in the sprint), he managed to come out unscathed without panicking.

At that point, Ballerini, encouraged via radio even by the Astana team's flagship team ("Go Davide, go!) sprinted to the finish line, winning ahead of Belgian Stuyven and Frenchman Maigner, already the winner of two stages and also miraculously escaped decimation on the last bend. A success, that of Ballerini, which is worth double because, in the programmes, he was supposed to launch the sprint to his team-mate Matteo Malucelli, Astana's number one sprinter. But in cycling, as in our lives, plans always go up in the air, especially with such insidious arrivals. Moral of the story: our Ballerini, no longer a youngster, and who in his career has only won 11 races not at the highest level, took the greatest satisfaction of his life by winning the Giro d'Italia, a feat that not all his colleagues can boast of. Then to win in Naples, in front of a crowd that applauds you as if you were Maradona, is an even stronger emotion that Davide, who has been through so many crashes that could have taken him away from cycling, truly deserves.

"I knew this finale, I knew that with the water it could become complicated, I came out of the corner and hoped until the last to make it," Ballerini said. "I've been chasing a Giro victory for many years, I felt good, I had already won in Turkey, but I was missing a stage in the Giro. It's always like that, things come to you when you least expect it," concluded Ballerini, from Cantù in Lombardy, who with that illustrious surname inevitably brings to mind the unforgettable Franco Ballerini, winner of two Paris-Roubaix and technical commissioner of the Italian national team, who died in February 2010 in a car crash during a rally at the age of just 45.

A spark of melancholy, the memory of 'Ballero', which lasts only a second and does not tarnish this beautiful day in which an Italian rider finally breaks a rather embarrassing fast that had lasted since last year, when Christian Scaroni was the only Italian to win a stage. Too bad for Jonathan Milan who seems to be haunted by Fantozzi's cloud. Better not to rage, though. The sprinter from Friuli was in fact well placed and could certainly have had his say. He will make up for it, because, as Davide Ballerini said, things come when you least expect them.