Veni, Vidi, Vince... 5 Truths following the Giro d’Italia

On Friday morning, ahead of the race-defining stage to Risoul, it would have taken either a very smart man – or a complete and utter fool – to check out of a bet on Dutchman Steven Kruijswijk on winning the 2016 Giro d’Italia, and placing their already considerable pay-out on Vincenzo Nibali doing the impossible.

Nibali’s stage 19 victory marked the first half of the Sicilian’s unlikely smash-and-grab, with the 31-year-old capping one of the sport’s most extraordinary comebacks on Saturday by cracking Esteban Chaves on the Colle della Lombarda.

But what does Nibali’s fourth Grand Tour win tell us about the bigger picture?

Surely that’s it for Nibali? The Shark had lost his bite with a few days of the race remaining, with talk of his team withdrawing their totem amid health concerns and general fears of his resurrect-ability. In short, Astana were ready to put him out of his – and their – misery. Even his loyal domestiques Jakob Fuglsang and Michele Scarponi had given up on their man, instead switching focus to their own ambitions.

All of a sudden it’s all smiles for team manager Alexander Vinokourov, who’s now apparently trying to pin Nibali down on a new contract to stop his most feted rider from joining the new Bahrain-backed cycling team. Nibali’s victory in this Giro proved the old adage that it’s never over until the fat lady sings – even when your star rider is languishing almost five minutes down in fourth place and pedalling squares.

Much was made of Nibali’s sensational comeback, with the critics pointing at the myriad controversies surrounding Astana in general and manager Vinokourov in particular. But the reality is that Nibali’s figures for his climbs in the Alps were hardly glowing. Meanwhile, the riders he beat were not the likes of Chris Froome, Nairo Quintana and Alberto Quintana (the “galacticos” who make up cycling’s Big Four alongside Nibali) but relative minnows in Chaves and Kruijswijk, plus a veteran in Alejandro Valverde who has had to rein in his aggressiveness as he approaches his late 30s.

Before the race we all expected Nibali to win this Giro quite comfortably – and that he only just managed to claw back a deficit on his rivals (one of whom was suffering from bronchitis, the other a broken rib) suggests he’s well below the previous high standards. Nibali’s wins, we must remember, tend to coincide with his rivals either crashing out or suffering misfortune or illness. And while that tenacity and ability to exploit circumstance is part of Nibali’s enduring appeal, it’s less of a weapon when you become the kind of rider whose same weaknesses are there to exploit.

A second victory in his home tour means Nibali has probably booked his spot on Astana’s team for the Tour. But the truth remains that Fabio Aru’s the future of Astana – not Nibali.

This one is quite simple: Nibali would clearly not have won the race had Steven Kruijswijk not make a total hash of things on the descent of the Colle dell’Agnello. Rarely can the outcome of something as long and complex as a Grand Tour come down to one moment, but this was it.

Nibali’s sudden rise was not only dependent on his ability to rediscover his form, but on his rivals contriving to lose theirs. It was as if something clicked in Nibali’s head the moment Kruijswijk slammed into the ice bank.

Sure, Nibali must be congratulated for having the strength of character and physical ability to exploit this turning point – but there is nothing to suggest from his earlier appearances in the Dolomites, Apennines and Friuli mountains that Nibali had what it took to turn things round without this external stimulus.

Once Team Sky’s race was thrown on its head following the withdrawal of their leader Mikel Landa, and around the phase of the race where Kruijswijk had assumed control of the fight for pink, Sir Dave Brailsford made a canny observation. The Sky manager said that the race was defined by two strong teams (Astana and Movistar) with weak leaders (Nibali and Valverde) and two strong leaders (Kruijswijk and Chaves) with weak teams (LottoNL-Jumbo and Orica-GreenEdge).

There was not much to argue with. The Astana army and Movistar mob were frequent fixtures on the front of the peloton, dictating with their power in numbers before being left undone by the inability of their leaders to finish off the job. Meanwhile the revelations of the race – Messrs Kruijswijk and Chaves – were riding out of their respective skins, but in spite of sparse support from their team-mates in the mountains.

There were exceptions to these observations, for sure. Enrico Battaglin stuck to Kruijswijk’s side in the tricky stage to Pinerolo, while Ruben Plaza, Amets Txurruka and Damien Howson worked splendidly for Chaves on the days leading up to his maglia rosa. But, for the most part, both Kruijswijk and Chaves were isolated in the mountains. Indeed, when Chaves most needed a helping hand – as Nibali pulled clear on the penultimate climb of the race, the Colle della Lombarda – it was not an Orica-GreenEdge rider who came to his aid, but his Colombian compatriot Rigoberto Uran of Cannondale.

Nibali, on the other hand, had a team-mate in Tanel Kangert waiting up the road to pace him near the summit. All this after Scarponi and Fuglsang buried themselves ahead of Nibali’s decisive attack.

It was a remarkable example of perfect team work – and, tellingly, not the only time Scarponi had come to the rescue: a day earlier the veteran Italian had been called back from contesting the stage win after snaring the Cima Coppi over the Agnello, and was integral in making the gap over an isolated Kruijswijk grow ahead of the final climb to Risoul.

If Nibali’s win was impossible without Kruijswijk’s crash then it would also not have come about without the unflagging support of his Astana team-mates.

For all Nibali and Astana’s collective brilliance the fact remains that, for the vast majority of the race, the Italian was not the strongest rider in the Giro – in fact, he didn’t even come close. All of Nibali’s early attacks in the opening week fizzled out, while instead of imposing himself on the overall standings in the tough second week of the race, he sunk with a whimper – throwing his bike to the side of the road after dropping a chain on the Alpe di Siusi mountain time trial.

Meanwhile, Kruijswijk was riding with all the confidence and composure of the triple Grand Tour winner that Nibali was failing to be. As Nibali was reduced to self-loathing, introspection and public questioning of his own form, Kruijswijk looked more and more like a champion elect. Not only did he close down every move, he extended his lead – all but winning the mountain TT and moving three minutes clear of Chaves and 4:43 ahead of Nibali with three stages remaining.

His critics questioned his ability to deal with the pressure – especially without the support of a strong team. But Kruijswijk took to his role as race patron like a duck in water. And yet Krujswijk might have been the strongest, but was he the best? By his own admission after dropping off the podium on stage 20: “staying on your bike is also cycling – and that is what I lacked yesterday.”

One mistake proved more costly for Kruijswijk than it did for his rivals – all of whom made their own mistakes (in Nibali’s case, catalogues of them). But the fact remains that before his crash, no one had taken time off Kruijswijk in the mountains. In fact, he had taken time off everyone. And a day after he did crash, he even took seconds off Chaves while nursing a broken rib.

If that suggests that he was in stronger condition than Chaves even when injured, then you can reasonably deduct that he would not have conceded as much time as the Colombian did – if any – to a reinvigorated Nibali. And even if he had shipped the two-odd minutes that Chaves conceded to Nibali, that five-minute buffer would have been enough.

He’s promised to come back bigger and stronger, but you sense that Kruijswijk will rue that moment of madness atop the Agnello for the rest of his career. After riding bravely in the final mountain stage, the Dutchman said he was “satisfied after what happened yesterday” but admitted he was still “disappointed because it was a big chance for me to win a Grand Tour and I think I was one of the best in the race”.

The Giro has really become Krujswijk’s stomping ground, the 28-year-old having now finished in the top 10 in Italy on three occasions, rising from seventh last year to fourth this year. But where can he go from here? Without a stronger team he will always be vulnerable in the mountains, while next year’s 100th edition of the Giro is bound to attract a stellar list of top names – including, no doubt, Nibali and his team-mate (at least, for now) Fabio Aru.

As for targeting other Grand Tours – as good as Kruijswijk has proved himself to be, he is still not in the same league as the likes of Froome, Quintana or Contador, which would rule out a strong showing in the Tour. Meanwhile, the Dutchman has very little pedigree in the Vuelta – his fair complexion no doubt hardly conducive to riding in the sweltering Spanish heat.

Like Tom Dumoulin in last year’s Vuelta – who dropped from first to sixth on the penultimate day – Kruijswijk may never have a better chance at winning a Grand Tour. The neutrals would all love to see him top the podium in Rome, Milan, Turin or wherever it may be – but the highest peak of the 2016 Giro, the Colle dell’Agnello, may forever represent the highest point of Kruijswijk’s career, just moments before it fell apart in such dramatic circumstances.