Mark Kittel won his second successive stage of the world's second most prestigious cycling race yesterday as its Irish leg came to and end.
It was an extremely tight finish; Kittel remarked: Actually I thought I lost the race already because I was really in a not good position, but when I saw the finish line I thought, 'You don't give up now, you give everything you have.' I'm so happy that it was still enough.”
?Tens of thousands of people lined the route as it took riders from Armagh to Dublin. Stages of the race don't take place outside Italy every year, and so when they do, they carry a certain gravitas.
All of the stages of the Giro are timed to the finish. After finishing the riders' times are compounded with their previous stage times. The rider with the lowest aggregate time is the leader of the race and dons the famous pink jersey.
While the route changes each year, the format of the race stays the same, with the appearance of at least two time trials, and a passage through the mountains of the Alps, including the Dolomites. Like the other Grand Tours, the modern editions of the Giro d'Italia normally consist of 21 day-long segments (or “stages”) over a 23-day period that includes two rest days.
