Hesjedal had come in as defending champion, determined to repeat and having built his season around the Giro. Wiggins was Tour de France champion and had arrived in Italy seeking the possibility of the Giro-Tour double and requiring a big Giro to prove to his team that he should be the leader in France and not Chris Froome whom they are leaning towards.
Both looked solid enough in the first week. Wiggins's Sky team won the team-time-trial and Hesjedal was attacking the rest on the first day with a steep hill. Then at the time-trial things began to come a little undone for both.
Wiggins still managed second, but he wasn't his usual dominant self and he only gained a handful of seconds of Vincenzo Nibali, while Hesjedal lost more than two minutes leaving him with an uphill battle going into week two.
Yet try as he might to regain lost time, Hesjedal could not find the power to go with his will whenever it came time to attack or follow attacks and he steadily lost time until earlier this week when he conceded more than twenty minutes and with it his title. He really should have went home then but he wanted to honour the Giro as defending champion as best he could and so he rode on.
Wiggins had crashed the day before the time-trial on a wet descent, injuring not a body part, but his confidence. From then on anytime the race went downhill in wet conditions -- which appeared to be virtually every day -- Wiggins would lose time to the main pack and have to work extra hard just to stay in touch. It was a disaster and it was energy spent he didn't need to be spending.
Things only got worse for Wiggins as he picked up a bug that had been travelling around the peloton and it worked its way into his chest. He lost more time yesterday dropping out of the top ten and it seemed his time competing in this years Giro was all but up. And so it proved to be. Overnight the Sky doctor checked Wiggins and recommended he be pulled from the race. When the riders took to the start line in Busseto this morning, Wiggins was nowhere to be seen. He had gone home.
And who could blame him? Riding day after day in what was miserable rain-soaked stages would do nothing to aid in his recovery. He was already out of contention and if he has any aspirations to showing up in France and challenging Froome for the leadership of the team then continuing to make his weakened body suffer more would be madness.
Hesjedal's condition is more unknown. He isn't feeling the effects of a bug and cannot put his finger on why he has suddenly lost the form he believed he had coming into the event. Ever since the time-trial he hasn't felt right and isn't improving. Long down in the general classification he too was a no-show at the start line this morning and will head home determined to figure out what was wrong with himself while switching his attention to July's tour.
The whole thing is a real shame for cycling fans.
This weekend the race goes into the high mountains in the Alps and this is truly where we'll begin to see the Giro won and lost. This was the weekend I thought we would really see Hesjedal and Wiggins lock horns in the Pink jersey fight. Sure we'll still have plenty of action with those left at the top of the GC, but let's face it, having everyone healthy and attacking one another would have been far better.
Before the race began I had picked either Hesjedal to Wiggins to win this years Giro. I seen it as the show down between the 2012 Giro champion and the 2012 Tour de France champion so it was very strange waking up this morning to find out that both of them had left the race little over halfway through for reasons of health and form.
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As for the stage itself ... well, it was a flat stage so you can insert the usual script: Small break goes clear early, builds big lead, gets caught near the end, Mark Cavendish wins bunch sprint.
