Pellizzari stays in Giro podium fight despite illness: 'A battle against myself'

Giulio Pellizzari always wears a smile on his face, but it was hard not to sense that he was a condemned man when he arrived in the mixed zone in Aosta ahead of stage 14 of the Giro d’Italia.

The Italian was stricken by illness last weekend on the summit finish at Corno alle Scale and although he limited the damage to decent effect in the stage 10 time trial, he appeared to be on borrowed time as the Giro wound its way north towards the Alps.

Fare l’elastico is the expression used in Italy to describe a rider hanging on to the back of a group, and although Pellizzari had been hanging in there all week, there was a sense that the elastic could snap on his Giro at just about any point. 

The rising temperatures in recent days hardly helped his cause, and Pellizzari arrived at the start wearing an ice vest and confessing that he didn’t feel he had recovered fully from the illness that laid him low a week ago.

“I still feel something, but half of the bunch is sick, we have to suffer together,” Pellizzari said, smiling again when asked if he was still thinking of the overall standings. “We will try.” 

The short but mountainous stage through Valle d’Aosta was predictably intense, with Jonas Vingegaard’s Visma Lease a Bike team keeping close tabs on the unwieldly early break before settling into a brisk tempo on the 16km finishing climb to Pila.

Pellizzari fell to the back of the pink jersey group almost as soon as the road began to climb. Victor Campenaerts was on the front for Visma, with Sepp Kuss, Davide Piganzoli and Vingegaard queued up behind him, but Pellizzari’s elastic already seemed stretched to breaking point.

At every bend, Pellizzari seemed to lose half a length before latching back, and it seemed to be only a matter of time. When Piganzoli took over with 5km to go, Pellizzari was among those distanced, and it looked as though his race was run.

Shortly afterwards, however, Vingegaard’s stage-winning attack scattered the GC group across the mountainside, and Pellizzari found himself in calmer waters just as others were beginning to flounder.

On the upper reaches of the climb, Pellizzari would fall in with Red Bull teammate Jai Hindley and Piganzoli. The Red Bull duo combined as best they could, with Hindley taking third at 58 seconds and Pellizzari coming home fifth at 1:03.

In the overall standings, Hindley is now fifth overall, 3:43 off Vingegaard, with Pellizzari sixth overall at 4:22. The maglia rosa looks well beyond their reach, but they remain firmly in the hunt for the podium places behind Vingegaard.

“I’m happy. It was a struggle, but it went well and I hope to get better,” Pellizzari told the reporters who knotted around him at the finish. 

“Given how I felt yesterday, I didn’t think I’d go so well here. Today was a battle against myself, I just had to stay focused. I want to thank all the people who have been close to me, because without them, I’d already have gone home. But I recovered well last night after the stage. It’s definitely not finished, and I’m happy to be up there with Jai Hindley.”

While Pellizzari talked reporters through his efforts on the final climb, Hindley sat undisturbed in the shade and dressed for the long descent to the Red Bull bus in Aosta. The Australian, one of the most affable riders in the peloton away from the bike, is always a reticent speaker in situations like this, and he limited himself to a succinct synopsis before he rolled back down the mountain: “Not too shabby.”

Pellizzari, meanwhile, had words of gratitude for everyone, including the soigneur who was helping him into a jacket as he spoke “I have to thank everybody – my family, my friends , my teammates, my soigneur. A lot of people, dai…” he smiled. “I just followed my pace on the climb, and I tried to get to the final kilometres in a decent state.”

On the final ramps of the ascent, he had his friend and occasional training partner Piganzoli for company. “I was out of breath, so we didn’t talk, but it was beautiful,” Pellizzari said. “We train together and we dream together so it’s great to ride with him...”

The elastic didn’t snap here. Pellizzari’s podium dream is still just about intact.