Giro d'Italia: Giulio Ciccone takes the pink jersey, Narvaez the sprint

Never trust the Giro d'Italia. Never. Even when you think the usual transfer stage is on the cards, something surprising always jumps out of its hat. Which, in short, is not on the agenda of those who make predictions and think they know best.

In this case, returning to the roads of the peninsula after the Bulgarian parenthesis, the surprise is twofold: because not only did the Uruguayan Guillermo Silva lose his supremacy, arriving at the finish line more than ten minutes late, but above all because the pink jersey, after a short but sparkling stage, all Calabrian from Catanzaro to Cosenza (138 km), was conquered by an Italian, something now very rare, by that Giulio Ciccone, from Abruzzo of Lidl Trek, who had been trying, very hard, to grab it for a lifetime without ever succeeding.

We don't want to say that it was almost an obsession, but in short, a dream that couldn't be realised, that was. He was so disconsolate that for this Giro, although he had already won three stages in the past and also wore the yellow jersey at the Tour, Giulio had decided to put aside any ambitions of the classification to devote himself above all to a few stage victories.

But life, including that of cyclists, is strange: when you least expect it, it gives you back what you did not have before. And so it was this time in a stage that, when described, gives you a headache, because on the only real climb, that of Cozzo Tunno, the group shatters into a handful of confetti, due to the crazy pace set by Movistar. While the former pink jersey, Silva, sank to the rear, in front about sixty riders took flight, who then played for victory on the finish line in Cosenza.

In this group there are also the big names, from Vingegaard to Pellizzari, including our own Giulio Ciccone who, sniffing the big hit, is also trying to catch the flying finish before Cosenza to scrape together a few bonus seconds.