By Leone Belotti
Stage 14: San Vito al Tagliamento-Monte Zoncolan, 181 km
At the Rosti Bar today we will see if there is "someone capable of doing the feat", and Mery has dressed up and is showing off a silk shirt open wide over a pearl necklace
«for his majesty the Kaiser», aka the Zoncolan, the hardest climb in Europe.
At half stage there are 7 in the breakaway, and 2 of them are ours, with our jerseys: Gavazzi of Androni, and Montaguti of AG2R. But the group doesn't let them get too far away.
At 50km they have 6 minutes. It's already been 3 hours of racing, and they're averaging 38km/h.
Berlinguer, worried: «Too fast.»
There are 5 left in front, and there are our 2 Rosti. It starts to rain.
Marelli, a retired electrician, is very agitated, downing one mixed glass after another and babbling things like: "Aru or never."
Mery incinerates him: «Today we are not cheering for Aru or Pozzovivo or whoever you want. Today we are cheering for cycling.»
“But is it true?” I ask her. “The pearl necklace, I mean.” And Gino looks at me badly. In a low voice, he explains: “Like all true ladies, Mery adores pearl necklaces, of every kind.”
From the way he says it, there must be a pornographic reference, which I don't want to go into, but I know that while Sanchez's chain is falling, a spectator flies to the ground,
and ours are on the Duron, "the hard pass that precedes the very hard Kaiser." (Gino dixit)
At 30km the 5 breakaways have 3 minutes on the group. At 20km Gavazzi loses contact.
"3 in 5" orders Gino (that is 3 Campari soda for 5 Campari with white) in honor of Gavazzi, caught after 170 km of escape. Barbin and Conti are in front, Montaguti chasing.
We are at the final 10 km, the Kaiser, the Zoncolan, with an inhuman average gradient, and sections at 22%.
The group, reduced to 40 riders, catches up with Montaguti. Valerio Conti is alone in the lead.
At 7km the Spaniard Igor Anton reaches him, and shortly after the group, very spread out, catches up with the two leaders. We are at the 22% wall. The moment of the climbers.
“With those slopes, you can’t stand up on the pedals, you’d lose traction,” explains Berlinguer.
“And if you lose momentum and put one foot down,” says Gino, “you can’t get going again.”
“And if you look at how they pedal, you understand that they use mountain bike gears.”
At 5km the big names are all there. Aru at the back of the group fights to get back. Puols leads, then Froome, Dumoulin, Yates, Lopez, Reichenbach, Pinot and Pozzovivo.
At 4km Froome takes off in blender mode, with Yates, Lopez and Pozzovivo chasing him. At 3km Froome has 10 seconds on the trio. The pink jersey Yates tries to go and catch him.
Marelli: «Challenge between the 2 Englishmen on the Carnic Alps for the capture of the Kaiser.»
At 2km Froome has 10 seconds on Yates. At 1km there are three tunnels before the finish. Froome comes out of the last tunnel, 500 meters, Yates a few meters behind, but that's a lot of seconds.
He tries, he tries, but he can't. Froome wins, Yates 5 seconds behind.
Then Pozzovivo and Lopez at 25, and Dumoulin and Pinot at 37. Aru at over 2 minutes.
Berlinguer sums it up: «The war of the two roses! Froome was great, Yates was great. It wasn't Aru's time, and Pozzovivo is alive.»
“The Kaiser’s pearls!” laughs Marelli.
“Like the one on Mery’s necklace,” says Gino, and he laughs too.