Giro d'Italia Stage 3



The riders ignored the fake road sign in Keady, offering a 'short cut'
to Dublin, and sped to the start of the Category 4 climb that would take them over Windy Gap to Newtownhamilton. It was sunny and fairly warm inbetween the heavy showers. A big improvement on the almost continuous rain that had dogged their progress around the North Coast the previous day.

After forking out 5 million Euros for the first three days of the Giro and hoping that tourist numbers would dramatically increase after 170 countries had seen the sweeping panoramas of the Causeway Coast live, NITB must have been worried that the international viewing public would spot the relentless downpour and put NI on a list of destinations to avoid.

Whatever the weather, thousands of people had turned up to watch and encourage the riders. Supplies of pink paint had all but run out and pink balloons, ribbon and all sorts of home-made decorations bedecked the roadsides. I stood at the edge of a long slope that wound uphill between trees in the soft green of new leaf. After plenty of cars and police motorbikes cruised by, a breakaway group of four riders came into view followed by their team cars with spare bikes on top. The four made light work of the gradient and raced away trying to gain as much time at the front of the race as they could.

Five or more minutes passed and then the peleton came into view, 200 riders closely bunched together with a phalanx of team cars following behind festooned with spare bikes. They came up the slope quickly but they weren't sprinting, they were riding tempo in their teams chatting to each other. Then one rider stopped just below me, the team car braked and a mechanic rushed out with a spare front wheel, changed it and pushed the rider back into the road. He was on his way again in under 30 seconds, sprinting to rejoin the pack.

More cars and motorbikes followed on behind, then a series of ambulances and finally a truck and police car with the legend 'race end'. The whole caravan had taken less than 10 minutes to pass. The Giro was gone, over the pass and down to Newtownhamilton and across the border towards Dublin where today's stage would finish. Sadly for NITB the sunshine across the leafy lanes and drumlins of Armagh would not be televised. By the time live coverage resumed, the riders would be travelling through Louth and Dublin and Bord Failte would be rubbing their hands with glee. Perhaps in the end this would not matter too much, as the majority of the international televison audience would not be aware that this small island was subject to two jurisdictions. Indeed, the flag-saturated local audience itself could not fail to notice that the tricolours flying everywhere were those of Italy.