The Giro d'Italia is one of three Grand Tours on the cycling calendar. It is airing on Universal Sports over the next few weeks and during the race daily recaps can be found here on this blog.
Today's Stage: For those who don't know, Belgian cyclist Wouter Weylandt was killed on a descent late in today's stage. The remainder of this post will deal with the race itself and another coming soon will talk more about Weylandt and what his death means in the cycling world.
Who won today's stage? Angel Vicioso of the Androni Giocatolli team won the stage from five man breakaway that attacked on the days final climb just 12 km from the finish.
What matters in the GC race? Race leader Mark Cavendish was dropped on the stage surrendering over five minutes to the leaders today. The new leader is David Millar, second on the stage, and a strong time-trialist racing on the Garmin-Cervelo team (nice to get that team out of the disappointment category today). Fringe contender Carlos Sastre lost over a minute today.
Biggest surprise of the day: The breakaway got loose at the end. The sprinters don't get a ton of chances to win in this race, so a breakaway winning one of the earlier stages before the mountains have started to tire out the peloton is a surprise.
Biggest disappointment of the day: Cavendish getting dropped and meekly surrendering the pink jersey.
Other items of note: The main thing is obviously the death of Weylandt that will be covered in another post. Other than that there isn't much today.
What is coming tomorrow? The race has been neutralized in honor of Weylandt. That means tomorrows stage will be a processional stage in his memory ridden at a slow pace allowing the peloton to cope with what has happened. Weylandt's Leopard-Trek teammates, if they elect to remain in the race will then cross the finish line first, together.
Any GC changes tomorrow? With the neutralization, nothing will change until Wednesday at the earliest.
With tomorrow's neutralization, the Giro d'Italia report will take the day off and return Wednesday with stage 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment