The Giro has started!
Alas, there is no defending champion. Pog hasn’t bothered showing up, the big coward. But it’s not Pog’s fault really, Giro winners in general don’t tend to return to Italy to try and keep the greasy mitts of others away from their pink jersey. Giro winners willingly concede and turn their attentions completely to the Tour de France.
The last Giro winner to come back the year after remains Tom Dumoulin. Tom did a big poo in 2017 and then won the Giro. He returned in 2018 and nearly won again. If he hadn’t underestimated Chris Froome’s ability to eat gels and Team Sky’s ability to ignore a doping ban, Dumoulin probably would have won that race.
Since then, Froome, Richard Carapaz, Tao Geoghegan Hart, Egan Bernal, Jai Hindley, Primoz Roglic and Tadej Pogačar have all been unwilling or unavailable to try and win the Giro back to back.
In fact, the last rider to successfully do that was Miguel Indurain in 1992 and 1993, which seems like a preposterously long time ago.
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