It had been, by just about every metric, a quiet day at the Giro d'Italia. For the first two hours of stage 3, there was scarcely an attack worthy of the name, and not even the accidental breakaway of sprinters shortly after the midpoint had raised much of a stir on a subdued afternoon in Piedmont.
The quiet even extended to the RAI television commentary team, who joined a 24-hour strike by journalists at the state broadcaster on Monday. The industrial action was called in the wake of the recent censorship of the writer Antonio Scurati, whose planned anti-fascist monologue for the Festa della Liberazione public holiday last month was abruptly pulled from the schedule, apparently amid pressure from the far-right government of Giorgia Meloni.
