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Saturday, May 28, 2005
Giro climax
Prefab Sprout once had a pop at Bruce Springsteen by claiming that there was "more to life than cars and girls". Well, I suppose this is true. There's bicycles too.I've just this moment got in from a very windy 47mile ride of my own, grabbed a ploughman's lunch (well if they will leave them lying about...), a can of Coke and plonked myself down in front of the last hours that matter of the three weeks of the Giro d'Italia Since our last update the riders have negotiated mighty peaks of the Dolomites over last weekend, followed that up with a relatively leisurely roll across the Lombardy plain to the Riviera and now they're currently in the Alps near the French border. Going into the Dolomites CSC team leader Ivan Basso held the leader's maglia rosa (pink jersey). Unfortunately for Basso he suffered from a stomach upset and lost over half an hour to his rivals across the weekend. It has been suggested that his illness might have been related to the pressure of leading and the weight of expectation upon him. If this is true it will have been noted by Basso's Tour de France rivals like Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich. Previously unheralded Colombian climber Ivan Parra put in a marvellous performance over the weekend and took both the Dolomite stage wins. As far as the general classification riders went, 2002 winner, "il falco", demon descender, Paolo Savoldelli managed to drop 2 times victor Gilberto Simoni on the final climbs grabbing 40 seconds here and 50 seconds there. Not the sort of vast time gaps Federico Bahamontes would open up but significant nonetheless. Another amazing performer was Danilo Di Luca. He's supposed to be a power climber, at home on the short steep moyen montagne of the Ardennes or the Basque country but not in the 2000m and up high mountains. Di Luca has been in the form of his life this spring and somehow he's managed to drag himself up these climbs without losing too much time compared to the sprightly pure climbers. Post the trip across Italy the riders faced a semi mountain stage in the hinterland behind the Riviera followed the very next day by a time trial into Turin. Both of these stages were won by a rejuvenated Ivan Basso but the big news was in the overall. On the mountain stage Di Luca lost time and dropped from 2nd to 4th but Garzelli gained time closing up from 1.48 behind Savoldelli to 0.58. It was always assumed the Garzelli would lose time in the following day's time trial but the question would be by how much. That there was a thumping great hill between the start and the finish in Turin would be at least some help to Garzelli who is a better climber than Savoldelli. As it turned out the Trentino man only lost 1:13 leaving the general classification going into today's mountain climax looking like this: General classification after stage 18So today, can Simoni drop Savoldelli by enough to grab the maglia rosa?  Right now, as the riders have nearly reached the top of the unpaved Colle delle Finestre. Simoni, Di Luca and Rujano have distanced Savoldelli by nearly two minutes. The leading three are working together somewhat while the maglia rosa only has Lotto Davitamon's Colombian Mauricio Ardila for company. The falcon is fighting really really hard to maintain his jersey as his rivals ride away. What can he do in the descent? 16:18 CEST |
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