Tirreno-Adriatico Giovedì 7th marzo 2013

Tirreno-Adriatico 2013

Thursday 7^th March 2013 saw the Tirreno-Adriatico come through Siena. This is a pro cycling race and is on the World Tour – that means that it is one of the most important multi-day stage cycling races in the calendar – it is not the same level as the gran tours – le tour de france, il giro d’italia and la vuelta espagna – but it is still a big race. This year the racers are top level: Mark Cavendish, Cadel Evans, Alberto Contador, Vincento Nibali (winner in 2012), Chris Froome etc etc.

It races from one side of Italy to the other, from coast to coast, and is called the sea to sea race in Italy (mare a mare). Each year is a different route and it is very well supported generally. This year the route starts in San Vincenzo on the Tuscan coast and after a team time trial goes through Siena en route to Indicatore near Arezzo – a distance of 232 km, with several laps at the end.

This morning was hot. I cycled to work with full winter kit and almost melted. In fact I saw snowdrops for the first time this morning. By the time I got out to watch the race it was toasty warm, about 16.5C, the weather has not been good recently and off and on it was raining hard. I had a good selection of where to watch the race but decided to go where the feed stop was at Taverne D’Arbia just outside Siena – on the off chance of getting a freebee J

The race set off from San Vincenzo at 10:30 am, followed the coast to Follonica and headed to Siena. It came very close to our house as it passed through Rosia and Ampugnano (location of Siena’s mighty airport! J ). At the feed station there were a lot of fans assembling and all the team cars were there and it was fun to see what was being put in the bags. From the photos you can see drinks were being made up and most of the teams were having energy bars and gels. One team was putting cans of coke in the bags which was a surprise. Bars were Etixx energy bar and a protein flapjack. It was a very wet and slightly windy day, so energy was probably important.

The race came through eventually, led by a huge concourse of cops on bikes. The Italians love a bike race and the organization was absolutely superb. Roads were cleared, trains were halted (near us was a level crossing) and the cops put on a great escort. The route was marked out with sign posts (I may have come away with one!) two days before and was very clear. I shall ride a little of the route on Sunday as the course they chose was superb with lovely high quality road surfaces (except for the level crossings) and not an area that I would have immediately thought to ride.

It was great seeing the riders and their bike handling skills as they came through at enormous speed, picking up feed bags from the support crews. They threw away old bottles and replaced new bottles, eating on the bike. The feeding area was a very flat 1 km stretch, and the beginning and end was very clearly marked, riders expected not to make any moves during this time.

And then they were gone! A scramble of punters looking for freebees, the support cars roaring off, more and more police cars and bikes and the road was quiet except for the scavengers. I did quite well at scavenging and came away with a great selection of bottles, and found a Leopard wind breaker that was stuffed into a cut off bottle – size small but it just about fits my gut! Interestingly, from the nose test only, half of the bottles seemed to contain water which I found very surprising - I thought everyone would use some sort of liquid nutriton. The Sky bottles had some crazy smelling very syrupy stuff and the other something that smelled of real orange juice. Sadly I didn’t get a feedbag, next time!

Three riders had a breakaway of about 10 minutes, not big names, and they stayed away for most of the day, being caught about 30 km from the finish. Mark Cavendish had been in the blue journey for the day after his team won the team trial and put him over the line first, but his team failed to fire in the rainy finish as Matt Goss from Orica-GreenEdge took out the win. In fact, Cav was very disparaging and even dismissive of his team – typical Cav!

Update: the RadioShack top  has got a name in it / so it beloings to Giacomo Nizzolo / if anyone knows him and he wants it back please tell him to get in touch!

A couple of days later I rode part of the course and posted the results on Strava.com - check it out here.

http://app.strava.com/activities/43698107