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.