Fran Muñoz’s blog (2): Breakaway in the Giro and first podium as a pro

Good evening! After presenting this blog last Friday and assuring you that I was going to fight to leave my mark in the Giro d’Italia, today I have had the opportunity to be protagonist in the breakaway of the fourth stage of this race.

I’m very happy to have been in the breakaway, the goal was to be at the front and go ahead as far as possible. We did it! Already last night, the sport directors let me know that this would be my role in this fourth stage and in the meeting this morning they confirmed that I had to fight to be protagonist in the 187 kilometres between Acqui Terme and Andora.

I was the first rider to jump out of the bunch at the start, looking for the breakaway. It was a surprise to see Filippo Ganna (INEOS) in front, what an adventure companion! But his presence at the front caused the peloton to speed up, and they didn’t want to leave us more than a minute and a half behind. In the end, Ganna dropped off because we weren’t going to go any further. However, in the final push against the peloton, his strength would have been very useful.

Being a protagonist in a day of the Giro is something super exciting, feeling the encouragement of the public in every town, in every metre… you experience the race in a different way because you only have the company of the riders who are riding with you in the breakaway. With Ganna dropped, there were three of us left: Calmejane (Intermarché), De Bod (EF) and myself. But Calmejane was also dropped, so we were a duo against the whole peloton.

From the team car, both Jesus Hernandez and Carlos Barredo have been helping me to measure the efforts: where we had to push, where we had to try to recover, looking for the options to arrive and get a chance to fight for the stage victory… That’s the objective we were looking for and although it was difficult, we played our cards right.

With the gap in the last 60 kilometres, we saw that we had tailwind and we had to try it, to keep the pulse on the bunch. In the first decisive part of the race, we maintained the gap well, even dreaming, but with the teams and the sprinters behind us, despite the crashes and the situation of the race, it wasn’t possible.

I’m happy with the good result I was able to achieve. I knew that the Intergiro was one of the prizes today, and I was able to take it. This was my first podium as a PRO rider, what an scenario for that debut! As an anecdote, I’ll tell you that when I went out to the podium with the cava bottle, I didn’t want to open it… I remembered Grmay’s incident, precisely in the Giro when the bottle cap hit him, and I was so happy that I didn’t open it! I wish Grmay a fast recovery from today’s crashes too.

During the stage I received a lot of congratulatory messages. But after an effort like today’s, the first thing was to recover and get a massage. I still have many messages to answer from all of you who have supported and encouraged me, so I’m going to do it. But first I also want to thank you all for reading me. We are still fighting to be protagonists of the Giro!

Fran Muñoz