Strong showings in the final stages over the weekend could secure a first Grand Tour win for the London-born Scot
In the last couple of weeks, Italian television commentators have grown to love Tao Geoghegan Hart. It’s partly the attacking attitude which has put the 25-year-old London-born Scot in with a strong chance of becoming only the second Briton to win the Giro d’Italia, which finishes on Sunday, but it’s also his name. “Go-Go-Go Go-aghan” shouts one, with obvious love of the pun, each time the Team Ineos cyclist prepares to sprint out of the peloton.
The commentators aren’t the only ones struggling with his name. “Congratulations to the winner even if we can’t say what he is called…,” said the Twitter feed of one Italian team after Geoghegan Hart took last Sunday’s mountain stage at Piancavallo. It was at that point, two weeks into the Italian Tour, that the young Scot – he claims the nationality through his part-Irish, part-Scottish father – first emerged as a potential race winner. Ironically enough, the two Britons who started the Giro as favourites, Geraint Thomas and Simon Yates, had earlier been ruled out of the race by, respectively, a crash and a positive Covid test.
