Stage 4 –  8 July 2003 – 141km

Today’s stage started in Frosolone, another quaint little Italian village.  The road twisted gradually up for about 1km before descending for 9km.  It was another 35C day – is it always so hot over here??

In the warm up my bike was perfect, however on the descent it started making a really strange rubbing noise down near the right crank.  I radioed back to Chris and moved to the back of the peloton.  I tried to explain to the neutral support crew that I had a funny noise down near my cranks but he didn’t understand English.  I was nearly 500m behind the peloton when I heard Chris tell me to stay with the peloton until the bike became too bad to ride.   The stage had nearly 70km of descending (yippee) and it would be impossible to get back into the peloton if I stopped.  So I opened it up and descended at nearly 75km/hr to catch back on.  It was much less stressful descending alone and I was quickly back in the bunch.

After the descent we had a nasty 4km climb that almost had me dropped.  I just made it over and recovered on another long descent.  The next part of the race was a little scary.  We had about 10 tunnels to go through.  Most riders dropped their sunglasses down their noses and peered over them to see, but this blocked the sideways vision a bit and made me feel like I had blinkers on.

The road continued to descend gradually as our speed hovered around 50-60km/hr.  Meredith Miller, Tina Mayolo-Pic and I were all racing aggressively – covering attacks and trying to get into a break.  Eventually, a break Tina was in, got a good gap on the field and we moved to the front to shut down the pace of the peloton.  TMobile missed the break and fought hard to try and get a rider across but we sat on each move they made, and they eventually gave up.

Tina rode a great race, working hard in a group of about 12 riders, while the rest of Team SATS rode defensively to slow the peloton as much as possible and increase her chances of the break staying away.  Tina’s group did stay away, and she crested the final 4km climb and sprinted to a strong 2nd place, while the rest of Team SATS finished in the peloton, just over 1min behind.  Our team was so happy to get our first podium in the Giro – it was a great moment for all of us.

By the way, I found out a small chain ring bolt had rattled loose and the noise was my small chain ring rubbing on my frame.  It took a little paint off but fortunately was an easy fix for our mechanic, Chad.