Ben Healy’s spring continues at the Giro d’Italia. Roglic detaches Evenepoel

When in the future we look back to the spring of 2023, among the many wonderful races that cycling has granted us – from Tadej Pogacar’s Flanders to Remco Evenepoel’s Liège-Bastogne-Liege, without forgetting Mathieu van der Poel’s Sanremo and Roubaix – we will remember that it was then that the epiphany of Ben Healy.

There was no one waiting for Ben Healy, no one who had the audacity to predict a successful and bright career for him. Opportunities to amaze us are less and less common, the Irish runner of EF Education-EasyPost has given us one. He appeared at the International Coppi and Bartali Week with his crooked gait, head hanging to one side, egg-shaped shoulders, knee socks in the manner of a soccer player. It’s not nice to see Ben Healy, but he is easily forgiven. Because Ben Healy is a courageous but not risky runner who knows very well what he can give, that he knows how to run with his legs and above all with his head. He knows what he can do, what his legs can give. And he makes sure to use what he has in the best possible way.

It is from the beginning of the Giro that Ben Healy tries to hit a breakaway. He knew that the eighth stage, the Terni – Fossombrone, 207 km, could be the right occasion. He was found ready. He took away a handful of adventurous people, greeted them when it was time to say goodbye, on the first ascent of the Cappuccini climb. Fifty kilometers in solitude, the way he likes it, the way everyone would like it, because without anyone else around, a victory is much more lustful. Upon arrival he greeted and thanked the public, he is a man of polite manners, he smiled, he enjoyed it.

There was a need for such an action. For him, above all for a Giro d’Italia who woke up still bored after yesterday’s lack of attacks.

Above all, there was a need for a stage like this to settle some accounts. Because behind Ben Healy and the other riders in the breakaway – Derek Gee finished second, Filippo Zana third – those who claimed to be in the Giro to fight for the pink jersey, proved that this is really the case.

On the second and last ascent to the Capuchins, Primoz Roglic has taken it upon himself to make the road harder for Remco Evenepoel. He succeeded very well. The Slovenian from Jumbo-Visma attacked, tested Andreas Leknessund’s willingness to defend the pink jersey, the Norwegian had great temper, above all he detached the world champion. Remco Evenepoel followed calmly, at his pace, like classy riders who aren’t afraid of the others, who know that their pace is the right one. Some insecurity must have come to him when the gap from Roglic, much more explosive than him, instead of shortening, as he had begun to do, widened. Especially when he saw Tao Geoghegan Hart and Geraint Thomas profiled next to him first and then their backs in front of him.

Primoz Roglic and the Ineos Grenadiers duo chewed 14 seconds off the Belgian (who is 20 behind the pink jersey). Not many, but enough to give them the conviction that nothing has really been written and Evenepoel the certainty that in order not to be gnawed at by doubts, he’ll have to give as many seconds as possible to the competition tomorrow in the time trial.

We’ll have to wait, not think too much about tomorrow, at least for the runners, who in three weeks if you think too much about tomorrow you end up feeling all the kilometers to go and not go any further.

And even for us who watch cyclists pedaling from a sofa, it is better to concentrate on the present, on a stage that was as enthralling as all stages that do not exaggerate in altitude meters can be. Because the equation plus climb equals more spectacle has always been an equation, if not wrong, at least imprecise, certainly unfounded. That climbs are needed, they are necessary, but sometimes better less but better than accumulation play, especially when these aren’t that great.

The order of arrival of the eighth stage of the Giro d’Italia