Filippo Ganna preferred not to speak. That, of course, didn’t prevent a television crew and a delegation of journalists from pitching up outside the Ineos bus after stage 4 of the Giro d’Italia, where Ganna animated the finale with a fierce attack on the Capo Mele.
The Italian had a handful of seconds over the peloton by the time he swooped past the lighthouse on the headland and began the short, fast descent into Andora, perched on the glistening Ligurian sea. He still had that buffer as the road flattened out inside the final kilometre, but his effort would ultimately be doomed by a familiar figure.
