I didn’t watch much of the webcast of Stage 3 of the Giro d’Italia yesterday. As you probably know, it was won by Danilo DiLuca of Liquigas-Bianchi, with defending champion Damiano Cunego and former champion Stefano Garzelli finishing second and third.
I skimmed through a bit of it on replay, and here are a couple of things I saw that I found interesting:
- RAI Sport Giro d’Italia Song and Graphics Package: About five minutes into the webcast, RAI Sport plays a little animated sequence with their Giro d’Italia song. This must be the beginning of the RAI broadcast for the day. It’s just a couple of animated bike riders riding across the screen with a guy singing in Italian about “il grande giro”, but this kind of stuff always interests me.
- Koldo Gil Perez collides with motorcycle: At the 2 hour 15 minute mark of the webcast, Liberty Seguros rider Koldo Gil Perez touches wheels with a television motorcycle and has to get an immediate bike change. The motorcycle driver apparently realized that Perez was drifting over, but didn’t sound his horn or get over far enough to avoid the cyclist. I think Perez was lucky that he managed to stay upright in this incident.
- Sprint into Giffoni Valle Piana: I wouldn’t have thought that a Category 2 climb about 10 kilometers from the finish would have split the peloton to the extent that it did, but it resulted in a sprint finish among the riders who could climb and descend well. The race into Giffoni was really intense.