Gossy’s Stage 3 Giro win was all according to plan and it went down to perfection, writes a thrilled Daryl Impey from the first rest day in Italy.
- By Daryl Impey
We did it! I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that we pulled off yesterday’s stage win with Gossy. We had a plan from the start and it worked to perfection.
My role in the team for the day was to be put Brett Lancaster in the front with Gossy with 450m to go. Although I was pretty nervous to mix it up in the big bunch sprints, my effort from the day before certainly gave me the confidence to do the job. 
I went from 1.1km out with the 2 of them on my wheel, my legs were exploding from 600m to 450m but I knew I had to get to 450m otherwise they would have a long way to go, I actually nearly threw myself off my bike I was going so hard and then Brett shouted “go right” and I knew I was finished thank goodness as I didn’t have a “watt” left in me. When I heard Gossy had won, I felt a great deal of relief as there’s always pressure to get a win for the team in a Grand Tour. Now that the pressure has been eased, we’ll go into the next stages slightly more confident and also more relaxed. It was a great team effort with Christian and Jack controlling the break with Sky early on and then the rest moved us up, everyone gave 110%.
It’s a pity we never really had time to celebrate as we had to rush to the airport and fly to Verona, Italy where the Team TT will start on Wednesday. We arrived around 10:30pm and finally had dinner but there was no chance for a massage.
Today is the first rest day, so it’s all about sleeping, eating, team TT training in the afternoon, massage, eating and sleeping again.
I have to say that yesterday’s crash was really avoidable if Ferrari had just held his line, no one deserves that. It’s a real pity for Cav and Phinney but let’s hope them and the rest who fell are all ok. I personally think if the GC team let’s the sprinting team just do their thing, we’d have a far more relaxed and SAFE final.
I’m sure we’ll find some time today to celebrate Gossy’s win and soak it all up on a great win for him and the whole Orica-GreenEDGE team.
Daryl Impey
> Watch the video of Impey’s leadout
Born and bred in Johannesburg, Daryl Impey has come a long way since he first signed with SA pro team Microsoft in 2003. He has since ridden for Team Barloworld, Radioshack and NetApp and most recently Orica-GreenEDGE. Daryl will be blogging exclusively for Bicycling for the duration of the Giro d’Italia, giving us an insight into what goes in to such a big event. Log on daily. The 2012 Giro (Tour of Italy) kicks off on Saturday 5 May in Herning, Denmark, and ends three weeks later in Milan.
Congrats Daryl! So proud to have you and Robbie representing us at the Giro. Loving your blogs!
Well Done, hope there will be more stages in the coming three weeks and you guys should be doing well in TTT as well looking at the first stage results