well jebus!

John Tezel said:

From cyclingnews.com live coverage today:

[knip]

Quoted message said:

--

And today he seems to be abandoning his team to work with Garzelli up
front, going all out to win it. When all he had to do was just
congratulate Cunego after stage 17, and take it easy over the
mountains in stages 18 and 19 in preparation for the tdf.

No more online coverage for me... I'm catching this one on TV this
afternoon!

Simoni was going for 2nd on GC and it almost worked. If Cunego had
played it better with Simoni yesterday I expect Simoni would have been
in 2nd today. Cunego may be talented but he's still got a bit to learn
about tactics. I believe Garzelli and Simoni made a gentlemans
agreement to work together to put time into those ahead of them on GC
and let the best man win the stage. Assuming Cunego didn't suddenly
crack on the last couple climbs it was a good deal. If Cunego did crack
then Simoni would be much more motivated to go faster to surpass Gonchar.

Certainly has been an animated Giro. :-)

"Richard Adams" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

John Tezel said:

From cyclingnews.com live coverage today:

[knip]

Quoted message said:

--

And today he seems to be abandoning his team to work with Garzelli up
front, going all out to win it. When all he had to do was just
congratulate Cunego after stage 17, and take it easy over the
mountains in stages 18 and 19 in preparation for the tdf.

No more online coverage for me... I'm catching this one on TV this
afternoon!

Simoni was going for 2nd on GC and it almost worked. If Cunego had
played it better with Simoni yesterday I expect Simoni would have been
in 2nd today. Cunego may be talented but he's still got a bit to learn
about tactics. I believe Garzelli and Simoni made a gentlemans
agreement to work together to put time into those ahead of them on GC
and let the best man win the stage.

Probably, but Simoni should have asked Garzelli to work with him all the way
to the line in exchange for not contesting the sprint: Garzelli was always
going to win it, short of Simoni dropping him, and the two of them easing up
a bit and playing sprint tactics in the last couple of kilometres will have
taken a good deal more than the four seconds Simoni needed for second on GC.

Cunego certainly didn't need to go grabbing bonus seconds yesterday, though:
but possibly he didn't think 8 seconds would have changed anything and a
stage win was better.

Peter

"John Tezel" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

From cyclingnews.com live coverage today:

But Cunego's success has been his team captain Gilberto Simoni's
downfall. Simoni hasn't really been at the same level as last year,
and although he made a bid for the victory yesterday, he was caught by
Dario Cioni, who dragged Gonchar and Cunego up. Simoni was on Cunego's
wheel when he jumped for the stage win, and either didn't or couldn't
follow him when he went. After the stage finished, Simoni turned
around and rode down the mountain to the team bus without talking to
anyone, a with a sour, angry look on his face.

As Simoni passed by Cunego, who was surrounded by journalists, Gibo
pointed his finger at the 22 year old Maglia Rosa and angrily said
"You're a [censored]...you are really stupid."

It seems that Simoni, who really wanted to win the stage was peeved
for two reasons. After the chase group caught him on the ascent of
Bormio, Cunego rode too hard of a rhythm, which took whatever
remaining "juice" out of Simoni's legs there was.

Then Simoni thought that Cunego didn't do a very good job of leading
him out, and then further humiliated the proud mountain man by
sprinting away for the stage win.

Also could be that Gibo realized that he was going to miss out on a hefty
bonus for winning the race, too.