THE SPIN COLD SHOULDER Could the future of the Giro d’Italia be under threat from the UCI’s new Extreme Weather Protocol?

The tifosi are being haunted by the prospect of the Giro d’Italia losing some of its lustre after Vincenzo Nibali said he was considering skipping his home Grand Tour this year following the cancellation of the queen stage of Tirreno-Adriatico in March because of a forecast of heavy snow (which never arrived).

His Astana team coach Paolo Slongo said: “Vincenzo is a great climber and it’s not fair that he targets the Giro, and then the mountain stages are possibly taken out of the race. What happened at Tirreno-Adriatico could happen in the Giro, and that would compromise all our work. It would also compromise the Giro.”

Bad weather has blighted recent Giros, but under the UCI’s Extreme Weather Protocol (EWP), the prospect of stages being cancelled purely on the strength of a weather forecast is very real. A Grand Tour would hardly live up to its name without mountain stages. If the EWP had existed in the ’80s, we’d have been denied Andy Hampsten’s attack in a blizzard on the Gavia (followed by his death-defying descent), which earned him the Maglia Rosa, and Bernard Hinault’s epic lone breakaway in another blizzard to win Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 1980.

Under the EWP, no thresholds are set for what constitutes ‘too hot’, ‘too cold’ or ‘too windy’. It merely mandates a meeting of all parties – including medics, organisers and riders – to review options such as altering the route, neutralising the stage or cancelling it altogether. This is less than ideal, since climbers like Nibali would be less keen to take refuge in a nice warm bus on a mountain stage than the sprinters.

Bad weather has never killed a pro rider – amphetamines and brandy did for Tom Simpson on Mont Ventoux, not high temperatures – yet the UCI felt the need to introduce its EWP on 1 January (and only for WorldTour and HC races - presumably lower-category riders and women are made of sterner stuff).

Is it a case of health and safety gone mad? Surely if we’re concerned about rider welfare, an Extreme Moto-Riding Protocol would be more useful in the light of incidents such as the crash that cost the life of Belgian rider Antoine Demoitié at Gent-Wevelgem recently? Mother Nature is an unpredictable force that most of us in the UK accept on a daily basis, but dangerous motorbike handling within the race convoy is surely a problem that can be eradicated.

Or what about simply making sure the road is safe for riders? Remember those metal poles in the finishing straight of stage one of last year’s Tour of the Basque Country? Balancing traffic cones on top of them didn’t prevent a serious crash, prompting Fran Ventoso of Movistar to tweet: “Does nobody care about cyclists? Where are those who defend us and review race routes?”

Too busy writing the Extreme Weather Protocol is the probable answer.

Climbers like Nibali would be less keen to take refuge in a nice warm bus than the sprinters