Vincenzo Nibali: 'The Giro has a more human dimension than the Tour'

Asked if the Giro changed his life more than the Tour, he does not hesitate. “If we are talking about my dreams as a kid, definitely yes,” he said to La Gazzetta dello Sport. 

“The Tour always felt more distant and in the summer I followed it with less attention. I was born in 1984, a few months after Moser’s victory in Verona, and a few years later those images of the great Francesco were the first Giro I saw, together with my father Salvatore.”

His early idols were painted in pink. “Bugno and Chiappucci fascinated me, then of course Pantani,” he recalls. “As an Italian, the Giro could only have the top place in my heart. After Marco’s win in 1998, the Tour was dominated by Armstrong, who was a very divisive rider. You either liked him or you did not. He never really excited me.”

When his own record comes up, Nibali cuts in. “I have never paid too much attention to numbers,” he says. “Every Giro was a challenge, a conquest, an adventure. That came before the results. I won and I lost with honour, I gave people emotions and I am proud of that. It is true that I threw away some victories. A third Giro in the cabinet would have looked very good.”

For that missing third Giro title, many people think back to 2019 and his on road tension with Roglič as Carapaz rode into pink. Nibali himself, though, points first to 2010. “If I had not crashed on the gravel while I was leading, who knows,” he says. 

“With Roglič there was an exasperated rivalry and my southern character came out, but that is part of the game. Primoz and I are friends now, and in reality we already were then. Most of the time the clashes are only on the bike.”

As one of only seven riders to have won the Giro, Tour and Vuelta, he would clearly like others to chase that path. “I would definitely advise Jonas Vingegaard to debut at the Giro and try to become the eighth,” he says. “He has just won the Vuelta and it would give him another big objective. I hope he comes back to Tirreno Adriatico too, to get used to the Italian roads again.”

There is another star he would like to see return. “I would really like to see Remco Evenepoel at the Giro again,” Nibali says. “Cycling is not only the Tour de France, which can wear you down mentally and physically. The Giro is hard, very hard, but it has a more human dimension and it still manages to make you feel fulfilled.”