Start of Giro d'Italia Brings Back "Pretty Horrible" Day for Cyclist Tyler Farrar The news came tearing through the peloton on that awful spring day, in whispers passed from rider to rider after Stage 3 of the Giro d'Italia. When the news finally reached Tyler Farrar, he nearly collapsed in anguish. "What happened in the Giro was pretty horrible," he said recently. There's no denying that. It was nearly a year ago that the Belgian rider Wouter Weylandt, a good friend of Farrar's, was killed during a crash on a fast, technical descent. The well-liked Weylandt became the fourth rider to die in the history of the race, and the first in one of cycling's three main tours in nearly two decades. Farrar had spent countless hours with Weylandt on training rides around Belgium, where Farrar, an American, makes his in-season home. He was so grief stricken that he pulled out of the race after riding a ceremonial Stage 4, crossing the finish line with Weylandt's teammates. "It was a rough time," Farrar said with the Giro's first stage held Saturday in Herning, Denmark. That kind of thing doesn't go away. I don't think it ever completely goes away. But cycling is my life, my job, and even though it happened, I still love the sport. I still love racing my bike. That has helped Farrar not only cope with the death of a close friend, but with all the other heartache that bikes have caused him. There have been his own crashes, too numerous to count, including the one a couple of years back in the Tour de France when he broke his wrist. He suffered through 10 stages before the pain became too much. Then there was the day he received a phone call that his father, Edward Farrar, an orthopedic surgeon back home in Wenatchee, Wash., had been hit by a car while riding to work. The elder Farrar had played linebacker at Georgia Tech, climbed some of the world's highest mountains and become an accomplished cyclist in his own right. Now he is paralyzed from the chest down. "Cycling has certainly taken some things away from me in my life, but it's also given me a lot," Tyler Farrar said. There's been rough moments, and moments where it wasn't my favorite thing in the world, but in the global picture, it's given me the life I have. I've wanted to be a professional cyclist since I was about 14 years old. You just have to deal with the hard part. Farrar, 27, has persevered through those many hard parts - those dark days after Weylandt's death, when he would lie in bed sometimes all day long - to emerge on the doorstep of what could be the brightest of summers. Farrar will be sprinting for stage wins with his powerful Garmin-Barracuda team at the Giro, and then shift his focus to the Tour de France, where last summer - on July 4 - he became the first American rider since Levi Leipheimer in 2007 to win a stage. And then, assuming he makes the United States team, he will go to England for his first Olympics. The course over some of London's most famous thoroughfares passes some of the city's most famous landmarks, and ultimately finishes near Buckingham Palace, where it is widely expected that the sprinters left at the front of the race will decide who wins the gold medal. "He's had a number of crashes and a lot of frustration along the way, and hopefully, he has all that behind him," said Steve Johnson, the chief executive of USA Cycling. It's going to be a hard course, I think, and the race can be made by the field, but it's a great opportunity for Tyler. He's definitely going to be one of the contenders. Another is Mark Cavendish, widely considered the best sprinter in the world. Cavendish, the reigning world champion from the Isle of Man, will be wearing the British colors on home soil. He will be favored to add an Olympic medal to a list of accomplishments that includes 20 stage victories in the Tour de France and nearly a dozen more in cycling's other important races. Farrar has beaten Cavendish before, though. He's the No. 1 sprinter in the world, and he has been for a few years now, and I'm one of the guys trying to beat him," Farrar said. There's no one else that has the same résumé, but there are a handful of us on our best day who are capable of beating him. Farrar speaks brightly when he talks about racing - the tactics, the competition, the burn of lactic acid that builds up late in a race - his voice conveying the message that he is never truly satisfied unless he is standing on the pedals with his hands in the drops.