Kilometre 0 by The Cycling Podcast

Twelve teams have won stages at the Giro d’Italia, which means that ten have not. 

In this episode we hear from some of those who are set to go home empty handed, including Doug Ryder and Ben O’Connor of Dimension Data, whose run of bad luck and poor results predates the Giro. We also hear from Marc Reef, the sports director at Sunweb, whose plans were destroyed when Tom Dumoulin crashed and had to withdraw. 

Kilometre 0, in association with Hansgrohe showers & taps

In only his fourth Grand Tour, Primoz Roglic enters the final stages of the Giro d’Italia still with a chance of winning. 

His back story is well known by now but the sheer speed of his progress is sometimes overlooked. 

Having started racing in 2013 he took his first win the following year – the same year one of his rivals here, VIncenzo Nibali, was winning the Tour de France. 

When Nibali was winning his second Giro in 2016, Roglic was riding his first Grand Tour, and, seemingly from nowhere, winning the time trial. 

In this episode we hear from Roglic’s teammates, team manager, rivals and also the rider he beat for his first professional win at the 2014 Tour of Azerbaijan. 

Kilometre 0 by The Cycling Podcast, in association with Hansgrohe showers and taps.

Adam Hansen of Lotto-Soudal follows a plant-based diet. Being lactose intolerant he cut out dairy products years ago and stopped eating meat a couple of seasons back. But is a meat-free diet compatible with the rigours of professional cycling?

We hear Hansen talk about his reasons for following a vegan diet, how he feels and whether it's difficult to get the food he needs when he's at a grand tour and his team doesn't have its chef.

Sports nutritionist Nigel Mitchell, who works with the EF Education First team and is writing a book about plant-based diets for cyclists, thinks that more professional riders will cut meat from their diets for a host of reasons.

And while Hansen may be unusual in that he's a vegan, the peloton has seen plenty of vegetarian riders in the past and in 2000 an entirely vegetarian team, Linda McCartney Foods, rode the Giro d'Italia without touching 'even a slice of prosciutto'.

Kilometre 0 is supported by Hansgrohe.

On long, flat – dare we say it, slightly boring – days like the tenth stage of the Giro d’Italia you will often see the peloton led for kilometre after kilometre by one rider from the team of the dominant sprinter.

On Tuesday’s stage to Modena, it was Cesare Benedetti of Bora-Hansgrohe who sat on the front for what seemed like hours, the peloton bunched up behind him. 

In the end it was all for nothing; the team’s sprinter, Pascal Ackerman, crashed heavily on the finishing straight. Ackerman was bleeding and hurt, his jersey and shorts in ribbons. Typically, the rider who stopped and waited and helped him to the line was the man who’d been on the front all day, Benedetti. 

Benedetti is not a star, or a big name, but he is a vital cog in a team that came to the Giro with ambitions on two fronts, in the sprints with Ackerman and in the mountains with Rafal Majka and Davide Formolo.

If they’re successful – as Ackerman has already been, with two stage wins – these riders will get all the plaudits and praise, but they couldn’t do it without their Swiss army knife of a domestique, who, as well as bringing back breaks on the flat, is a strong rider in the mountains and Bora-Hansgrohe's road captain, making decisions and relaying messages between sports directors and teammates.

So who is Cesare Benedetti, and what do his days on the Giro look like? We talked to him to find out a little more about this Polish speaking Italian who rides for a German team; we also asked him to keep an audio diary of a typical day on the Giro.

Kilometre 0 is supported by Hansgrohe.

At a race that glories in its traditions and sometimes its dogmas, Giusy Virelli, a 34-year-old from an Italian cycling backwater in the deep south, is something of a trailblazer. If Mauro Vegni, the race director, is the architect of the “Corsa Rosa”, Virelli has become one of its key project managers, the most important “Girina” on the race.

In Riccione on Sunday, Virelli told Daniel Friebe how she found the Giro or it found her, and what goes into plotting the hallowed, annual lap of her homeland. 

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Filippo Simeoni wishes his career was remembered for his stage wins in the Vuelta a España or his Italian national championship title in 2008. Instead, as of a day in late July 2004, he became synonymous with an incident that had nothing to do with winning races and instead caused him to lose some of his faith in humanity. 

Simeoni had previously testified against Lance Armstrong’s coach and doctor, Michele Ferrari, and now Armstrong made him pay. On a day that for him should have been meaningless, just another canter towards inevitable victory, Armstrong thwarted Simeoni breakaway attempts and scolded him with insults and, Simeoni said, threats. 

Fifteen years have passed and Simeoni has long since left pro cycling behind. This week, however, he returned to the Giro when the Corsa Rosa passed through his hometown in the Apennines south of Rome. Between pangs of nostalgia and thoughts of what might have been and what wasn’t, he reflected on his career, cycling today and of course the Armstrong incident. 

Kilometre 0 is supported by Hansgrohe

Ten days before the Giro d'Italia started, Conor Dunne became a father for the first time. Having missed out on all the grand tours last season when he was with the soon-to-implode Aqua Blue team, he didn't want to miss the opportunity to ride the Giro d'Italia. But it meant leaving his newborn baby and partner behind. In this episode of Kilometre 0, we ask riders and managers about parenthood in the peloton.

Kilometre 0 is supported by Hansgrohe.