Hurtling through the air at 70kph, a matchstick’s width from the wheel in front, is a terrifying prospect for most hobby cyclists. As it turns out, the pros get scared, too.
“When I think afterwards, I’m definitely scared,” says Jacopo Guarnieri, Caleb Ewan’s lead-out man at Lotto-Dstny. “But when you’re into it, you’re just so into the race, into the fighting spirit. After, you think, ‘That was close.’”
The GC teams, Guarnieri explains, can make it more stressful. “Dealing with them is not always easy,” he says. “For them, the target is 3km to go, and sometimes they go so deep and line out the peloton in a moment you don’t really expect it.”
Then comes the unavoidable chaos of the dash to the line. It was in a hectic…
