Giro d'Italia 2022: How long can Mathieu van der Poel keep it up? Why Mark Cavendish has to go to Tour

An enforced break to get the riders and race infrastructure all the way from Hungary to Sicily – a mere 2,000 kilometres by car – gives the cycling media a moment to pause and reflect on the events of the opening three days of the 105th edition of the Giro d’Italia. If the race has largely kept to script, it has also thrown up no shortage of talking points. Here are 10 of them dissected by Felix Lowe before the race resumes with its first summit finish on Tuesday.

Ad/> Van der Pink – but for how much longer? Giro d'ItaliaGiro d'Italia 2022 Stage 4 — Route map, how to watch first mountain stage as race hits Sicily2 HOURS AGO We’re beginning to run out of superlatives for Mathieu van der Poel. The manner in which the Dutchman dug deep on that final five-kilometre climb to Visegrad – not merely to stay in contention, but to power past his rivals and hold off the impressive Biniam Girmay – was yet another display of his superstardom. The sight of a post-victory Van der Poel sprawled across the ground is hardly something new – it’s the way his body reacts to the vast majority of his wins.

But he looks like this – that’s to say, like a man on the cusp of extinction – because the superhuman effort he puts in often comes in stages he has no real right in winning. He plummets such depths to reach highs that should be beyond him, but aren’t by virtue of his astonishing ability to suffer more for his art than anyone around him. /> One day later, Van der Poel came just three seconds from winning the time trial in Budapest.