Israelis make strong showing in Giro d’Italia’s Haifa-to-Tel Aviv Stage 2
Thousands descend on Tel Aviv finish line as Italian rider Elia Viviani wins segment; Israel Cycling Academy riders made energetic sprints ahead of the peloton for home crowd
Thousands of people descended on Tel Aviv on Saturday to cheer on the end of the second day of the Giro d’Italia, the prestigious 21-day cycling race whose first three stages are in Israel.
Elia Viviani (Quick-Step Floors) won the 167 km stage with a time of 3:51:20, with Jakub Mareczko (Wilier Triestina – Selle Italia) and Sam Bennett (Bora – Hansgrohe) in second and third places, just tenths of a second later. This puts Rohan Dennis (BMC Racing Team) in the first place overall and yesterday’s winner, Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) in second place.
The Israel Cycling Academy had an especially strong showing in the mostly flat course, with team member Kristian Sbaragli snagging 12th place. Israeli rider Guy Sagiv finished a respectable 35th, with Guy Niv finishing 122nd.
Tel Aviv’s Charles Clore Park turned into a pink-clad cycling festival, as thousands of people watched the race on dozens of large screens around the park.
When Israel Cycling Academy member Guillaume Boivin of Canada broke away from the peloton with 50 kilometers to go, the crowd went crazy, waving flags and cheering, although Boivin eventually lost the lead.
“I had never heard of the Giro before they started talking about it coming to Israel,” said Tzvika, a 54-year-old resident of Tel Aviv who was watching the action.
He was at the finish line with his wife on Saturday afternoon. “I can’t even believe this is in Israel,” he said, looking around the park. “There’s something in the air. We’re forgetting the ‘balegan’ [mess] of this country.”
“If we had a lot of events like this, maybe people in the world would see us differently,” Tzvika added. “They’re watching us all over Europe. I went crazy when I saw the aerial shots of Israel on TV. I was speechless – we have a beautiful country!”
A pink-clad Dalia Coldham was at the finish line with her women’s cycling group, called “Dalia’s Studio” from Macabbim in central Israel, hoping that the country’s newfound love for competitive cycling will get more people on bikes.
“Biking is infectious, every time I get a person hooked on cycling, suddenly her husband starts cycling and her friends start cycling,” said Coldham. “I hope this will infect everyone in the country and we’ll all come down with cycling fever. There’s nothing better than an injection of endorphins. There will always be politics and tragedies, but there’s something in the sport that washes it all away.”
“Seeing a team from the United Arab Emirates shows that this is more than just one person, this is a universal thing, and that’s what sport does, it connects everyone,” Coldham added.
There is a team sponsored by the United Arab Emirates and another team sponsored by Bahrain, though the teams refused to comment on the political situation.
Guy Niv’s childhood friends from Atzmon, a village in the Galilee, roamed the park with giant signs that read “Amazing kid!”
“This is going to be the highlight of his career,” said friend Almog Fox, 24. “It’s crazy, less than a year ago he was a mountain biker [with the Israeli Olympic team], and now he’s here. We can’t believe that it’s happening,” added Nimrod Armin, 23.
His friends added that a few years ago, even after getting a special dispensation from the army to serve as a soldier-athlete with limited responsibilities in the army that enables travel to international competitions, Niv decided to give up cycling, in order to enter into a prestigious combat unit. After a year without training, Niv changed his mind, retested to get the soldier-athlete status, and returned to professional racing.
Armin added that he thinks Israeli kids will look at Niv as a hero and get into cycling themselves. “This guy has been riding since he was zero,” said Fox. “It’s his first time in this competition and the first time it’s in Israel, and the fact that there’s two Israeli riders… it’s really symbolic.”
The Giro continues with Stage 3 on Sunday, the last stage in Israel. Riders will follow a lengthy 229-kilometer (143-mile) route — the second-longest leg of the entire race — from Beersheba in the Negev Desert down to Israel’s southern tip of Eilat along the Red Sea.
After the race’s conclusion in Eilat, almost 1,000 people and three cargo planes full of bikes and gear will need to fly out of the tiny Uvda airport in the space of an hour to reach the next stage of the race in Italy.
The riders have a rest day on May 7 and then start in Sicily on May 8.
The event, the second most prestigious cycling race after the Tour de France, consists of 21 days of racing, totaling 3,546.2 kilometers (2,203.6 miles) with 44 kilometers (27 miles) of vertical elevation.
The three-day start in Israel is the country’s most expensive and logistically complicated sporting event, costing more than NIS 120 million ($33 million).
