It's Yer Incredibly Prestigious 2019 Giro d'Italia racejunkie Awards!

Okay, so I've been a *little* bit discombobulated this Giro by Movistar sucking *again* with some guy from it who's not Mikel Landa winning instead.  But still and all, it *was* rather a ripper, so before the inevitable din and unbearable hype surrounding the inferior Tour de France kicks in, let's give credit where credit is (sometimes mortifyingly) due: It's time for Yer Incredibly Prestigious 2019 Giro d'Italia racejunkie Awards!  Prizes (I swear), should any winner be so desperate as to claim them: a stylin' custom-embroidered racejunkie cap to adorn yer head; a passel o' racejunkie stickers to deface every mountaintop sign to pass in a car so you can pretend you actually climbed the thing on yer bike; and, in lieu of the hallowed Trofeo Senza Fine, a promotional statuary tchotchke plucked right from my local secondhand store and engraved with *your actual name.* So own yer glory, and yer shame kids--it's damn-near-as-good-as-a-maglia-rosa time!

Talk Softly and Carry a Big Stick (Except You Didn't) Prize: hey, we *all* love a little pre-race smack talk.  After all, what better way to get the adrenalin flowing, the tifosi screaming, and yer rivals ready to stick a shank in your tire at 50 miles an hour? That's right, Simon Yates's suave suggestion that his fellow GC contenders oughta be "!@@#ing in their pants right now."  Um, are you sure that wasn't just what you thought they were doing when they were actually 20 kilometers up the road ahead of you instead?

Caught With Their Pants Down Prize: heck, mechanicals happen.  But when you really *don't* want them to happen, particularly when everyone's surmising whether you're about to take the entire show in Verona, is when your team car collectively decides now's a perfectly harmless time to drop trou at the side of the road for a little gruppo nature break.  Still, Primoz Roglic managed to get another bike and get on his way eventually. Oh, well--it's not like he wanted the final maglia rosa anyway!

Screw You Race Organizers! Award: Remember when time triallists were approximately size of the Abominable Snowman, and about as likely to disrupt the results of the final overall podium?  Yeah, well *I* do, and time was, whippersnappers, where only the rarest of GCs was actually decided by a freakin' pile of suckfest TIME TRIALS THAT NO PURE CLIMBER WAS EVER ABLE TO NAVIGATE COMPETITIVELY ANYTIME ANYWHERE EVER.  And yes, I'm a bitter Landa fan.  Do you *know* how much this race would've changed if the first day (and the last!) hadn't taken a !@#damn baseball bat to this poor kid's legs, and ego?  Perfidy, thy name is PLEASE PLEASE GIRO DON'T EVER DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS EVER AGAIN!

Superdomestique-o'-the-Giro: speaking of whom, in my misery over Movistar's usual hosing of our little Carrot underdog, I *do* have to in all honesty give this one to, yep, this year's new and now reigning Maglia Rosa, Richard Carapaz, who genuinely dug in there with his last ounce of energy in the race's penultimate stage to smoosh the GC contenders to almost--almost!--give the stage to loyal, if overall generally a bit bummed out, co-captain Mikel Landa. Aw, thanks for trying Richard--now *don't* come between Mikel and the (I hope) Vuelta!

Fake-Out of the--Hell, of the Century! Award: so what're a ravenous press, twitterverse, and bored-as-hell tifosi supposed to think when a bunch of guys in intimidating-lookin' hazmat suits ostentatiously descend on the notorious Alexander Vinokourov's Astana team bus and disappear inside with what looks like some high-tech James Bond spymongering gear?  HOLY !@#$ STOP THE INTERNET AND FLEE FROM THE NARCS IT'S US POSTAL ALL OVER AG--uh, it's a minor new cleaning-product sponsor, like, *seriously* giving that filthy team bus a nice scrub.  Well now that we're all freaking out Vino, can you get a damn whiskey sponsor out here to calm us down?

Total !@#$in' Hypocrisy Award: so someone finally notices that Alessandro "Wheezy" Petacchi, already renowned for sucking enough asthma meds right before the finish line to open up the airways of an entire herd of stampeding wildebeest, is retroactively implicated in some *other* ancient doping scandal that's just now being revealed by clowns lining up to take down a doctor everyone already knew was a dope supplier now that they've benefited from all the !@#$ they took from him, and what happens? That's right, the noble head honchos over at RAI--who've previously had no reservations showcasing *other* former pros snarled in their own doping allegations, who shall remain nameless because I like them--take the strapping ex-sprint king right outta the broadcaster's box and into the annals of Guys We Knew Should Make Us Look Bad But Like Who Cared Until Now Anyway?, while fellow miscreants-turned-commentator-darlings David Millar and Christian Vande Velde get to laugh their absolute !@#es off over a beer.  I mean, not that Petacchi deserves a ticker-tape parade for his hijinks, but what the !@#$, people?!

Crash o' the Race (GC-Deciding): Y'know, in the absence of last year's defending-champ-who-declined-to-defend-his-title-therefore-dishonoring-this-beautiful-race-and-should've-been-thrown-into-a-viperous-gaping-snakepit, I was actually rather looking forward to see how runner-up Tom Dumoulin was gonna do--but we'll never know, because the poor kid was taken out by a nasty knee injury on Stage 4.  Didja see how he at least tried to get on the bike the next day before succumbing to the inevitable?  Now *that's* giving the race its due!

Crash o' the Race (Jaysus Thank God He's Okay!): speaking of asthma, this one's unfortunately for AG2Rs Alexis Vuillermoz, who actually did have a severe enough asthma attack on the Queen stage 16 to cause him to crash into a ravine, be rescued, hauled up, and treated, and, miraculously, climb back on his bike and proceed to finish the stage.  Forget the hype about all the Classics guys--now *that's* some hardman !@#$!

*I'm* Not Crying, *You're* Crying! Prize: he burst onto the scene in 2015, climbing (and smiling) like an angel at the Vuelta, where he wore the yellow jersey, and then in 2016 at the Giro, where he hit the podium.  And after that?  Well, despite a lovely stage win at the 2018 Giro, the poor boy was gobsmacked for damn near a year by a bout of Epstein-Barr virus, with naysayers wondering if he'd ever truly come back.  But come back he did, with a gorgeous victory on Stage 19 and a tearful celebration with his adorable parents.  Oh, shut up and pass me the Kleenex, you sentimental fool!

Fan !@#$wit Award (Were You Raised By!@#dam' Wolves or Something? Edition): look, we all live for waiting on a freezing roadside for seven hours in the vain and statistically unlikely hope that a passing domestique will toss a water bottle, an empty musette, or even a spit-covered half-empty gel packet, our way.  And honestly, most of these guys are nice enough to actually look for some eager kid (or grown-up!) to toss 'em to, when they've got quite *enough* to attend to at that moment, thank you.  But just a bit *too* eager was the big adult assclown who thought it was perfectly okay to bodily wrench a water bottle from the very mouth of poor Marco Haller like a medieval barber yanking a rotten tooth from some poor bastard's head with a rusty farrier's hammer.  Forget the fan--I'm inclined to award this one to Marco for charging over and berating the !@#$in' idiot!

Fan !@#$wit Award (Malice Aforethought Edition): between the too-close-flag-wavers, the selfie-stickers, the dog-walkers, and, may heaven protect our eyes, the exhibitionists running beside the riders screaming in their too-small banana-hammocks, it's often hard to pick who gets a Fan !@#$wit Award in the Giro or any Grand Tour.  But to their credit, at least they're just stupid--it's a whole 'nother animal when someone actively picks up a pale-blue cruiser bike and intentionally throws it in the race course, which inevitable near-catastrophe was heroically averted by another tifoso who immediately ran out into the road ahead of the charging peloton and retrieved it.  Holy crap, and I thought tossing tacks into the road was bad!

Fan !@#$wit Award (Vigilante Justice Edition): What's even worse than a stupid crash when you're riding like mad for the final podium?  The roadside moron who puts you there!  Undaunted by the ticking clock, though, Miguel Angel Lopez took the time to give the gentleman an etiquette lesson--if you can call smacking the guy upside the head til his hat spun out like a frisbee "etiquette." And while everyone was quick to assure that they don't condone violence, even the race organizers, with the power of expulsion in their hands, were inclined to let this one slide.  Hell hath no fury like a GC contender impeded!

Nice Guys Finish Last (But Also First!) Award: Chad Haga--who generously entertained the lot of us with his pithy #GiroOversimplified daily roundups via twitter--slogged through rain, sun, rain, and rain for three straight weeks and sat in the hot seat for damn near the entire final day before finding out the truly bitchin'--he won the Stage 21 time trial, and single-handedly salvaged the demoralized leaderless Team Sunweb's entire Grand Tour.  Nice to have something sweet to cheer about for once, amirite? Woot woot woot Chad Haga!

And Finally, the Punk-!@# Move of the Giro: y'know, I usually have a wealth of options to choose from here, as the race for the final maglia rosa grows more intense, tempers rise, and frankly, usually Alejandro Valverde is racing it.  But this year he wasn't, and aside from a little argy-bargy in the sprints from Elia Viviani, and Vincenzo Nibali clearly about to go completely over the edge at Primoz Roglic's failure to assist him in overthrowing, well, Primoz Roglic, this year was astonishingly civilized.  So here's a slightly revised "Dumb-!@# Move of the Giro" Award: for forcibly abandoning your own team leader Nibali (who could've really used the help, by the way) by getting popped for a 2013 Austrian doping scandal 5 stages into the race, Kristijan Koren, this one's for you!

Well folks, there's my Giro d'Italia awards for 2019--now either claim 'em, correct me, or hope to heck I don't have to give your sorry !@# another prize next year!