Giro D'Italia or Giro d'UAE?
UAE Emirates dominates stages wins, Bahrain Victorious still owns pink jersey.
Forgive the sacrilege of suggesting such a thing. Have we no sense of decorum?
Yes we do and no, this isn’t sacrilege as much as indulging in a bit of playful observation.
After stage twelve of this Giro d'Italy — a shade over half way through — riders from UAE Team Emirates - XRG and Bahrain Victorious have won five stages, nearly half the haul on offer.
That’s quite a showing — especially when you consider that to a significant degree, UAE Emirates is riding without their three top riders, Adam Yates, Jay Vine and Marc Soler. Those superb athletes all crashed out in the same catastrophe that occurred back on stage two.
That’s almost half the squad but out hasn’t slowed down the UAE victory train. Specifically the emergence of Jhonatan Narváez, who has stepped into the bright lights with three victories.
Now, add a fourth courtesy of Igor Arrieta and you have one team scoring a third of the possible stage wins. That’s called a successful Giro and we still have 10 stages to go!
While Bahrain Victorious hasn’t been as victorious as their Middle East counterparts, they can still claim to be putting on quite a show. Belgian Alec Segaert took today’s stage, winning solo and holding off the field in the final three kilometers.
And their Portuguese climber, Alfonso Eulálio, perhaps 4th in the pecking order after Yates, Vine and Solar, has worn the pink jersey since very early in the race. He joined a break and scored a massive six and a half minutes over the rest of the GC gang.
He not only has pink, he has the white jersey by a wide margin over Italian phenom Giulio Pellizzari. Not bad for a backup singer on a super group.
Amazing the kind of results you can get with an operating budget like the one at UAE Team Emirates. That bankroll is estimated at somewhere between 50 to 60 million euros, the largest in the World Tour. Which means when your first guy and second guy and third guy all crash out, your fourth guy can still win three stages.
Bahrain also has deep pockets though not quite as princely as UAE and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. They have a measly 36 million euros. Maybe Bahrain should ask the Sheikh for a low interest loan?
In any case, this is the Giro d’Italia and we are in Italy. It just feels a little like a show from the Middle East.