With a big mountain day ahead of us this morning, I was grateful that a half-hour drive to the start this morning meant we could relax in the team hotel until 10.30.

Before Covid, you could sign on any time you wanted to when you got to the start area, but nowadays each team is given a time to go up onto the podium together and register for the stage.

As we were one of the first teams to sign on this morning, there was plenty of time for a team meeting and, with a 15km uphill start to the day, a lot of guys warmed up on their home trainers in anticipation of fireworks out the road.

I don’t really like the hassle of hopping on the home trainer before the start, so I used the 7km neutralised section as my warm-up instead. With four big mountains and three more long uncategorised climbs en route to a gravel-road finish at the ski station of Campo Felice, you could feel the nerves in the peloton as we rolled out this morning.

When the flag dropped, the attacks began. Waves of riders went off the front only to be brought back and replaced by more. I followed a few moves on the first climb and got into a couple of groups on the descent and was in a decent position as we began the 15km climb of the Passo Godi after about 40km.

Again, I jumped into in a few moves on the first half of the climb but none of them were able to snap the elastic to the fast chasing peloton until halfway up, where Michael (Storer) managed to get across to the front in a group containing mountains leader Gino Mader and his team-mate Matej Mohoric.

After my earlier efforts, I spent the second part of the climb trying to recover and didn’t really enjoy it at all.

On the really long, technical descent that followed, I was surprised when we passed Mohoric sitting on the side of the road holding onto the crash barrier.

The Slovenian is one of the best descenders in the peloton, but today his rear wheel slid out and did what they call in motorbike racing a ‘high-side’. Mohoric’s bike snapped in half and he was flipped over the handlebars onto his head at speed. Although he tried to stand up, I found out later he was forced out of the race with concussion.

The roads were so bad on the descent that it was easy for gaps to open and the bunch split in two on the way down, with yours truly caught in the second half with about 80 others. Thankfully, there was no real panic and we all regained contact with the front of the peloton at the bottom of descent – just in time to start heading skywards again.

While today’s climbs weren’t as steep as some of the other ones we’ve had so far, they were all about 15km long, so the length of each ascent and a strong headwind made for a pretty wearing day.

With Michael’s escape group of 16 being held on a tight leash of around three minutes, I rode out in the wind just ahead of Romain for the rest of the stage so that he could save his energy for the finale, while Chris (Hamilton) did the same for Jai (Hindley).

When we got over the penultimate climb to Ovindoli after 135km, I did my last 10km flat out in the wind and at the bottom of the final mountain, with about 7km to go, my job was done. I moved over and let them at it. Just as I did, it started raining, so when the team car passed me they handed me a rain jacket and I wore it for last 5km to the summit finish.

Today’s gravel section in the last couple of kilometres was a bit strange. The surface wasn’t like the gravel roads of Strade Bianchi, it was more clay and sand than gravel, and there were a lot of deep, sinky sections in it.

While it didn’t affect my race, Romain told me afterwards that when he tried to overtake somebody in the front group at the finish he sank into one of those sections and said it was like riding with the handbrake on.

Although he lost a couple of seconds on the last straight, he finished seventh on the stage and is now 13th overall.

At the top, I grabbed an extra rain jacket for the dirty descent to the team bus and was pleasantly surprised to find that, as we had won the team prize on yesterday’s stage, the three guys who finished in front of me had to go to the podium to collect it, so I was first one back to the bus and first into the shower.

Sometimes the small victories are just as sweet as the big ones.

Giro d’Italia, Stage 10

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