"Sonarrat" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:First off, all 140 riders who finished yesterday also finished today.
To have only one DNS and one DNF between the two hardest mountain stages
is amazing. Petacchi, Pollack, Rodriguez, d'Amore, Usov, Furlan,
Zanotti, and Nauduzs should all be in Milan tomorrow.
They were short stages with fairly generous time cuts (20 percent). So the
bus could lose 45-50 minutes or so. Everyone easily made the cut yesterday.
Quoted message said:Cunego had a lot of things he had to do with very little margin for
error. He wanted to protect his pink jersey (he succeeded), fail to
take enough mountain points to surpass Wegmann (he succeeded), and help
his team captain up onto the podium... it is the latter position that
I'm not so sure about. He did crack Popovych, but by going with Cioni,
who was too far back on GC to challenge either him or Simoni, he baited
Gontchar and may have cost Simoni 2nd place.
Cunego rode very well in an uncomfortable position (although Simoni was in
the same position a few days back). The only turn he did was to close the
gap to Pellizotti and then Cioni, so he can't be accused of riding his
teammate down. As for Gonchar, Simoni was already up the road so he didn't
really need any more motivation. If Simoni had *really* wanted that second
place (rather than the pink), then he would have asked Cunego to jump across
on one of the climbs and help them out. That would have screwed Gonchar. But
somehow I don't think that was Simoni's objective today.
I think that not taking the mountains jersey was fairly low on the priority
list for Cunego. Wegmann, who is not what you'd call a great climber (a
smart and gutsy rider yes) took it by the skin of his teeth in the end. But
nice riding by the German.
Quoted message said:It was very interesting to see Saeco's team all -behind- Cunego, sitting
on to the advantage of Simoni while keeping Cunego in a good position to
defend.
Only Mazzoleni was left with Cunego and he helped keep him calm. After
Simoni attacked, there was no more tempo work that had to be done by Saeco.
Quoted message said:And Fassa Bortolo finally sent a couple of guys with Dario Cioni! It
was a good thing they did, because Massimo Codol (who was working for
Pantani last year) was there to give Cioni his back wheel, literally,
and big powerhouse Marzio Bruseghin was there all day to keep him fresh.
I'd say it worked, he leapfrogged past Popovych into 4th place on GC.
Not bad considering at the same time last year, he was outside the time
limit with Petacchi.
Also not bad, considering he's been busting his butt for Petacchi in all the
flat stages. I think he more than deserved the help today, especially with
two flats. Bruseghin is an ox!
Quoted message said:One more thing - Alessandro Bertolini was second to last in the Tour de
France last year. What makes him think he can climb all of a sudden?? 🙂
It's the Giro. He's Italian, riding for an Italian team. What more
motivation do you need?
cheers,
Jeff
