I call upon Beppe Conti, the Giro's paleontologist, to answer this painfully simple question: my friend, tell me honestly, but if they had proposed the finish of this Giro's opening stage exactly as it was in the races of Torriani, Castellano, Zomegnan, how far would we have gotten before fiery trials and fierce condemnations?

I'm reopening the chapter on that sinister stretch in Burgas taking advantage of the rest day, so we can discuss it with more time and more calm, without the pressure of overlapping news cycles. Do you remember? It was only Friday, not six months ago. The setting: the final hundreds of meters, the theater of the sprint, narrow as a bobsled track (I'm exaggerating, but only slightly, given the mass of the peloton and the speeds involved). The barriers: horrifying to see and to speak of, those infamous old-style little feet reappear suddenly, those murderous little feet that drip blood, for years and years of sprints ruined by their deadly exposure at the roadside.

They'll tell me: so what, why are you stirring this up? It's over, let's move forward. But it's precisely by looking forward that I can't free myself from that nightmare. At the time I watched in disbelief, disbelief that after decades of debates and alarms about safety, congresses and general assemblies, speeches at every level, it was still possible to see something like this in the opening stage of a Grand Tour. Something that nowadays you struggle to see even in minor races, thank goodness...

Indeed. It's the Giro's opening act, the first sprint and it's immediately a catastrophe. If someone didn't notice, if someone thinks I'm being catastrophic, if someone simply doesn't remember, go watch the videos. At one point the peloton explodes into a thousand pieces, like a glass bottle shattering on the ground. You even see an athlete flying through the air, a somersault and landing beyond the barriers. Something terrifying, certainly a chilling advertisement for cycling, unless the new perverted video-game mentality doesn't lead us to consider that half-slaughter an amusing and exciting spectacle. The truth is that everyone dismisses it quickly only because nobody pays the price. But this isn't just any consequence of just any crash. This is simply called a miracle.

Yet it's supremely stupid to question things only based on the emergency room tally, or the morgue. This is a tremendously serious matter, it must be considered for what it is, you can't wait for someone to die to make a big deal out of it. I'm asking for a friend: is safety always the priority, or is it just mindless lip service?

People crash anyway, through carelessness, through error, through fate (see the UAE massacre), since this is the DNA of cycling, now the most dangerous sport in the Olympic landscape. The intensity and level of today's riders are already at maximum, the equipment constantly pushes the limits: if you don't prevent and intervene at least on the fundamentals – a finishing stretch as it should be – then let's stop with the hypocritical talk and at least change the name of the discipline, let's not call it cycling anymore but something more realistic, perhaps low-grade butchery.

I ask again humbly: where are those who stop races because it's raining too hard, where are they when you arrive at such a meat grinder? These days there's talk of new rules, speed limiters. Fine. But where are the bodies responsible for signing off on the routes, the technical commissions, the union representatives. Where were they at the Giro's opening stage? All cutting ribbons and eating canapés for the cameras?

I remain convinced: we've already buried that crash and swept it under the rug only because a grace was granted by the god of cyclists, a god with a loose hand, who prevented a death or someone in intensive care. But we came far too close, too close to stay silent, turning away. Never more than now must we say that that stage remains a grave error, without ifs or buts. And if someone gets offended, go talk about it with that poor guy who flew beyond the barriers, or maybe with his mother and his wife.