Cycling news - 'A forbidden dream' - Luca Paolini recalls thrilling 2013 Giro d'Italia stage win

The Italian saw off a series of attacks from defending champion Ryder Hesjedal on stage three before attacking himself with six kilometres of the final descent remaining to clinch the stage and the overall race lead.

Paolini’s memorable win is the first episode of Giro d'Italia Classic Stages, a 90-minute live and on-demand interactive daily show bringing to life the most memorable stages of Giro from the last seven years. The show starts on Saturday, May 9 at 3.30pm CEST – the original start date of this year’s postponed Giro d’Italia – and runs for 21 days.

Reflecting on his stage win, Paolini, who was riding in his first Giro at the age of 36, said: “For us Italians, to have a maglia rosa, especially without expecting it, it’s lovely. People remember those things.

“I saw it as a one-off chance to do well. You know that the maglia rosa is always a dream, but a sort of forbidden dream, so I was only really thinking of the stage. But I did think for a minute that if I manage to put it all together…and well, it was beautiful.”

Paolini’s ride down the descent was so impressive that he even had time to ease off before the finish and savour the moment.

“The fact that the descent ended with one or two kilometres to go until the end, meant that until that moment I think I looked around only once, on a long straight road. Maybe on the radio and with my expressions, you could see I was thinking to myself ‘maybe you’ll do it’, but just before I got to the 700m to go banner, when I didn’t see the group behind, I realised ‘wow, you’ve really done it at this Giro’!

“I stopped really pushing 100 per cent with a kilometre to go. I was so happy with the stage, I didn’t think too much about the maglia rosa at that very moment, even though the day before I’d made all my calculations. But you know what it’s like when you’re just happy to win the stage.”