Joaquin Rodriguez takes over the Maglia Rosa

Santini-sponsored Katusha Team took over the lead in the Giro D'Italia on Monday. Joaquin 'Purito' Rodriguez unseated first-time Canadian leader Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin Barracuda) by winning the sprint up a nasty final climb of the 187 kilometer stage 10 from Civitavecchia to Assisi. The victory earned Rodriguez a 20-second win bonus that pushed him past Hesjedal in the overall.

Read the Cyclingnews.com report here, the VeloNews.com report here, the VeloNation report here.

Hesjedal first Canadian in Pink

It is a great honor for Santini to produce the Maglia Rosa, an honor we take seriously and one that comes with great reward when we witness a new rider earn the chance to wear it.

Earlier this week (May 12, Stage 7 between Recanati - Rocca di Cambio 202km), Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin Barracuda) became the first Canadian to wear the Giro D'Italia leader's jersey. He faced an immediate challenge the following day (May 13, Stage 8 between Sulmona - Lago Laceno 229km).

In what was considered a Medium Mountain day by organizers, Hesjedal held an uncharacteristic (for a General Classification leader) position at the rear of the peloton. His Director Sportif admitted the lanky 30-year old was suffering from stomach issues. On the penultimate climb of the day -up to Lago Luceno - the pace picked up and the lead group whittled down to a slim dozen riders. Hesjedal see-sawed off the back. Time and again, a small gap would open up in front of him and time and time again, he would dig just a little more to stay connected to the group.

Amazingly, when the camera panned down he appeared to be riding a much bigger gear than conventional wisdom would say you should use on such a climb; holding a lower cadence that demands more power. If you remember Ryder's breakout performance in the 2011 Tour de France, you knew that Hesjedal was capable of the high-cadence, in-and-out-of-the-saddle riding style so prevalent of the best mountain climbers of our day. So what was prompting this almost Ullrich-style approach to the climb?

By nature, Hesjedal is a power climber. He is tall, which gives him tons of leverage for pushing big gears. So he probably felt more comfortable muscling through the pain. It could have simply been that his body's muscle memory reverted back to his days as a dominant US-based mountain-bike racer.  Because just like Stage 8 of the Giro, success in mountain bike racing during his early career often came to the riders who could hang on at the front on the hardest parts of the course until, hopefully, you were the only rider left.

We saw his mountain-biking power climbing technique first hand in 2003. Durango, Colorado hosted that year's NORBA finals and US National Cross Country race (in which foreign riders could compete for the race win but only the first American across the line would be crowned national champion). The race started with a brutal vertical ascent up an off-season ski slope. Impossibly steep. I was positioned at the very top of this first climb in an attempt to catch a photo of the first group over the hill.

I heard the starting pistol fire, 1,000 feet below me. And waited for the fifteen minutes it would take for the first group of riders to break through the trees and swing past me on their way to the upper loops of the course. That first rider was Hesjedal. And he was alone. He had somehow put more than a minute of distance between himself and some of the best cross-country mountain-bike racers in the world. On the first climb.

I snapped a quick picture on a slow-thinking, first-generation digital camera, desperate not to miss the shot, not even seeing what I was shooting. After he passed, I went back into the camera and checked to make sure Hesjedal was in focus. That when I noticed his gearing.

On that climb, where he had broken free so early in the most important race of the American cross-country season, on a slope so steep you could barely hike it without slipping, Ryder Hesjedal came flying by me in his big chainring.

An amazing talent. A great representative for Canada. And a deserved wearer of our beloved Maglia Rosa.