Team Coast won the Tour de Suisse with Alex Zülle in 2002, and four years later Gerolsteiner took overall victories in the Dauphine Libere and the Tour of Poland with Levi Leipheimer and Stefan Schumacher. There were the teams Wiesenhof and Milram, who achieved success on the UCI World Tour. The last overall victory of the rider of a German cycling team in a Grand Tour was 23 years ago.
In this respect, Jai Hindlay’s triumph at the Giro d’Italia on Sunday was not only a milestone for cycling Down Under. The first victory by an Australian in the Tour of Italy is also an outstanding success for Bora-hansgrohe. The team from Raubling in Upper Bavaria is picking up on the times when cycling was popular with the masses in Germany. It is the first success of a German team in one of the three grand tours in Italy, France and Spain since the 1999 Vuelta. At that time, Jan Ullrich from Team Telekom had won the overall ranking.
In the end, Hindley was able to hold his ground in front of Richard Carapaz from Ecuador with 1:18 minutes. When he took the pink jersey from the road Olympic champion and overall Giro winner in 2019 on Saturday at the Fedaia Pass, emotional scenes played out in the German team’s camp.
With tears in his eyes, sporting director Enrico Gasparotto radioed his driver from the support car the good news about the Ecuadorian’s growing deficit and verbally accompanied him across the finish line.
Jai Hindley celebrated his extraordinary success the following day in special company. Just in time for his big coup at the 105th Giro d’Italia, his parents flew from home to Italy to celebrate their son’s greatest career success in Verona.
In the city in northeastern Italy, the 26-year-old professional from the German Bora-hansgrohe racing team made the overall victory in 2022 perfect in the final individual time trial on Sunday. “It’s an unbelievable feeling, with great emotions. Of course, I had 2020 in the back of my mind and was a bit afraid of losing the jersey,” said an overwhelmed Hindley afterwards, adding: “I’m a proud Australian and I’m really happy.”
In 2020, Hindley was already the overall leader in the final Giro time trial in Milan, but had to leave the triumph to the British Tao Gheoghan Hart. This time Hindley didn’t let the Maglia Rosa be taken away from him and achieved his greatest success to date as a professional cyclist in the Verona Arena – and the first overall victory in a Grand Tour for his Bora-hansgrohe team.
In addition to Hindley, the German team placed another driver in the top ten with Ravensburger Emanuel Buchmann. The mountain specialist finished seventh, 13:19 minutes behind Hindley. Compatriot and teammate Lennard Kämna had already ensured a German victory on the fourth stage on Mount Etna in the first major national tour of the year.
“I had a difficult preparation with many setbacks. I’m not at my absolute top level, but I’m doing quite well. And I also see it as a positive thing that I was able to ride at a good level for three weeks without a serious fall or illness,” said Buchmann. Incidentally, the 29-year-old also achieved the best overall German placement in a Tour of Italy for 39 years. In 1983, Dietrich Thurau finished the 1983 Giro in fifth place overall.
