Roughing it with the pros

More professional road races are venturing off the tarmac and onto gravel – and that is something to be celebrated

TREVOR WARD

After almost two hours grinding up steep gradients, dodging fallen boulders and being battered by torrential rain, things took a turn for the worse. I arrived at the start of an 8km stretch of sterrato – dirt road. When the Colle delle Finestre made its debut in the Giro d’Italia in 2005, La Gazzetta described this abrupt change in road surface as the ‘border between heaven and hell’. A legend was born. It was here that Chris Froome launched his spectacular solo 80km breakaway during Stage 19 of last year’s Giro, securing him the maglia rosa. The thought of following in the tyre tracks of such an audacious piece of cycling would normally send tingles down my spine, but I was too busy straining to keep upright on a surface…

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Cyclist Off Road (Digital) - 1 Issue, Autumn 2019

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