Maestri’s flight, and those tears to dry.

The noise of a shattered dream is like this: this is it. And it is a dull and painful noise, a noise that stings like a thousand pins, that stays in the ears and goes down into the stomach to stay there to feed doubts and regrets. Mirco Maestri, that dream has chased it for 140 km: so long was his chase, which ended mockingly a few hundred meters from the end. And really there would be little more to say, because in the heat of the moment near victories hurt more than defeats. Instead, there are things to say. There is to say “bravo” to Mirco for what he did and how he did it. There is to say “too bad” because everyone – Mirco, the team, the staff, the fans – believed in it until the last meter. There is to wipe away those tears, legitimate and normal, to regain a smile.

And then there is to continue like this, with heads held high: EOLO-KOMETA is running the only way it knows how, and it is giving dreams and emotions. It will continue to do so, like it or not.

Mirco Maestri: “When they told me I would do the Giro, I thought I would come back here to finish what I had left behind in 2019 when I was mocked after a very long breakaway. I believed it, I tried, I fought to keep that promise to myself. But this is sport: situations change, but sometimes the results are the same. Of today’s stage, the awareness remains, because it is not a given to be able to come back to the Giro after two years and have a chance to fight for a stage. It doesn’t happen to everyone and we came close: days like that serve to make you stronger and we, me and the team, will come back even stronger. As Donald Duck teaches, you never give up.”

Maurizio Borserini