Watch all the action from the 2023 Giro d'Italia on SBS VICELAND from May 6-28, with all the replays and highlights on plus news, analysis and much more on the SBS Sport website.
The Canberran has enjoyed a meteoric rise in road cycling since switching to the sport in 2019, and on Stage 1, he’ll be lining up as a co-leader for the UAE Team Emirates squad in a bid for a top spot on the general classification.
He started 2023 with a bang, upsetting the favourites to win the national time trial, before backing up with the Tour Down Under overall victory. A subsequent knee injury ruled him out of racing until the Giro, but he was able to train for a few months in preparation including participating in the team altitude camps.
“The body is all recovered,” said Vine in an interview with SBS Sport. “A lot of people have asked me how I’m going and if the injury is going to be an issue for the race.
“The main answer to that question is that I certainly wouldn’t be here if there was any concern about health, performance or the injury flaring back up. I haven’t just prepared ten weeks of my life for three weeks of racing around Italy just to DNF on Stage 4.”
Vine isn’t resting on the laurels of his superb January start to 2023, revealing ahead of the Giro d’Italia that his time-trialling set-up is improved from his national time trial championships winning scheme.
“Oh massive changes,” said Vine. “After I recovered from my injuries, we spent a lot of time on the (TT) bike and also time in wind tunnels and also researching different materials, wheel, tyres and pressures.
“Then we really dialled in the position, because 73 kilometres of time-trialling in this Giro makes it really important.”
The opening stage time trial is an early marker for Vine to showcase his form and new time-trialling rig, the 19.6-kilometre route with modest climbing towards the finish an interesting early challenge for the general classification contenders.
“I’m really looking forward to it,” said Vine. “It will be the first time I wear the Australian colours in Europe. It’s an interesting course, one where pacing will be really important.
“It’s probably not as brutal as the Bologna course a few years ago, but still important with that kick in the end. Apart from a few corners in the final few kilometres, it’s pretty non-technical, so looking forward to that and hoping to have good legs on the day.”
The overall approach from the 27-year-old won’t depart too far from his impressive Grand Tour performances so far in his career. He animated the 2021 Vuelta a Espana, before being one of the best climbers in the 2022 edition of the race, winning two stages and having the climber’s jersey all but won before crashing out.
“The main thing that has changed is that I won’t deliberately be losing buckets of time on flat stages,” said Vine of the differences between his Vuelta attempts and the Giro. “I’m most looking forward to seeing how the body reacts in the final week. With all those high mountain passes in the final week, it’s not just do a 20-minute watt-per-kilo test, recover then do another one.
“It’s 45-minute to an hour long climbs, which I’m sort of used to in Andorra, but not at the race pace we’ll be doing them or after however many kilojoules will be in the legs at that point of the race.
“The other thing will be being switched on every day, I was doing early work in the leadouts for Tim Merlier at the Vuelta, but then I would switch off and not get involved in the final kilometres. So that will be different, fighting from kilometre zero to the finish line.”
The Australian isn’t the sole leader within the UAE Team Emirates squad, he’ll be sharing duties with Joao Almeida, a rider who has built a strong reputation as a Grand Tour contender, never finishing worse than sixth overall at a three-week race, with the only blight being a DNF when contracting a nasty bout of Covid-19 while running fourth in the 2022 Giro. Vine talked about the dynamic between him and the younger, but more experienced, Almeida.
“They’re pretty aligned,” said Vine. “There are two massive favourites in Remco and Primoz, I don’t think there’s going to be any illusion that we’re going to try and ‘Team Sky’ and take it up from Stage 4.
“We don’t have the best time triallist in the race, so we can’t bank on taking back loads of time either. So, having the dual leader, or captain and co-captain strategy can really work, especially with everything being so backloaded.
“They can’t chase everyone and come the final week with 15,000 metres of climbing its going to be really hard. It’s no Vuelta ‘22, everyone’s going to have to pedal all the way to Rome.
“We saw with Simon Yates a few years ago cracking in the week that you can lose a lot of time really quick. The strategy and my overall ambitions of riding to a top 5 or top 10, just riding a good GC really, is highly aligned with what the team’s goals are.
“But we’ve had Joao at this race four years in a row, and he’s really motivated to get on the podium. I think he’s shown at the last few races that he’s really capable of going up against these guys and with an extra ace up his sleeve he can possibly get the better of them.
Vine spent a lot of time training with the Giro d’Italia squad at altitude in Sierra Nevada, where he said he ‘picked Almeida’s brain’ about the ins-and-outs of racing for the general classification.
“It's pretty cool being in a team with a guy with that experience,” said Vine. “The only one better in the team would be to have Pogi (Tadej Pogacar) here, but he’s got his sights set on a lap around France.
“It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to join the team, it’s clearly a GC setup with marginal goals and gains basically written in the contract. It’s a wealth of knowledge and they know how to win Grand Tours. With the way I was going, it was a natural way to progess my career.”
With the race arrived and now just the business of navigating the 3,489-odd kilometres to the finish in Rome, Vine had this message for Australian viewers watching along on SBS VICELAND.
“I pray for the sun, which will be good for me, and good for viewers as we’ll get good coverage from start to finish.”
Giro d'Italia - Stage 1 - Fossacesia to Ortona
Saturday, May 6
9:40pm - 1:35am (AEST)
LIVE on SBS VICELAND and SBS On Demand
