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On the lower slopes of the 25 kilometre long Alpe di Siusi, the Liguigas team is already lined out at the front of the bunch. The worst of the climb lies ahead but already they are pounding out a fearsome pace. If anyone doubted that today would bring about the first major selection of the race, they could forget about it now. These men mean business and attrition is the name of the game. One by one riders drop of the back of peloton, legs burning, unable to cope with the speed of the men in the driving seat. Still 15 kilometres from the finish, the day’s break is caught. On the front now is Liguigas’s diminutive Pole Sylvester Szmyd and he’s doling out the punishment, his team leaders Ivan Basso and Franco Pellizotti tucked in behind him.
Kilometre after kilometre pass and the scalps Szmyd is claiming just get bigger and bigger. The first one to go is Lance Armstrong, the second mountain top finish in a row on which he’s dropped. Four team mates surround him and work to shepherd him to the finish and minimise his losses. Damiano Cunego then pops, a disappointing performance from the Lampre rider on what is the first real test in the Giro. Then his old sparring partner Gilberto Simoni slips off the back, but never gives up trying to pace his way back on.
Up front now there is a very select group. Ivan Basso carries on his team mates’ work, driving the pace and possibly doing too much in his enthusiasm to break his rivals further back the road. Danilo Di Luca lurks on his shoulder, knowing that if he hangs on he has a great chance of a stage win and taking the pink jersey, which currently lies on the shoulders Thomas Lövkvist, who is having the ride of his life to stay with the leaders. Levi Leipheimer is looking looking comfortable and has his Astana colleague Chris Horner riding shotgun. Meanwhile, two other big names have proven that they aren’t just here as a training exercise. Carlos Sastre and Denis Menchov are in the thick of it at the business end of the race. This group are the men, it seems, who could be contesting for victory by the time the time the race reaches its conclusion over two weeks from now.
Sastre, clearly a more confident rider since his Tour win last year, is the first to make a move in the final kilometre, jumping clear of the bunch only to get an immediate response from Menchov who blazes away off the front. Only Di Luca can respond and bravely fights to get on to the Russian’s wheel. Menchov however is too strong and takes his first Giro stage victory. Di Luca though has done enough to take the pink from Lövkvist, another good day at the office after his stage win yesterday.
After today’s stage we have a better idea of who has a realistic chance of winning. Basso, Leipheimer, Menchov, Sastre and Di Luca are all sitting pretty. Gilberto Simoni managed to limit his losses to the extend that he is still only 47 seconds down on the general classification, but such a noted climber should have cause for concern if he couldn’t hack it today. Mick Rogers also fought his way back into contention and is a mere 36 seconds down. The big losers are Armstrong, who lost almost 3 minutes today and Cunego, who is 3:29 down in the overall. Franco Pellizotti, as expected, will now probably have to relinquish his co-captaincy role with Ivan Basso, after being unable to last the pace with the favourites today. The surprise package of the day was Britain’s Bradley Wiggins, who has never been noted as a climber. Yet he remained up with the leading bunch for most the final climb and finished ahead of Cunego and Armstrong. Wiggins, judging by recent photographs at least, seems to have dropped a lot of weight and perhaps is trying to transform himself into more of an all rounder. He now sits 25th overall, 3:58 back.
Jens Voigt’s face is etched with a grimace of pain. It’s not the first time the rangy German has been out in front on a long mountain stage. Suicidal attacks are his stock in trade. Usually the result is glorious failure. Now and then he hangs on for the stage. Either way, Voigt is in his element. So is that a grimace or a grin?
Midway up the final climb of the day to San Martino di Castrozza, Voigt is locked in conversation with his breakaway companion, Barloworld’s Francesco Bellotti. The break started with six, then it was three and now it is just two. Presumably Voigt is telling Bellotti that he has to keep the pace up if he wants to continue riding with him and presumably he didn’t like the answer he got because within a minute or two, he has turned on the gas and left Bellotti stranded.
Gripping the brake hoods in his fists, churning ahead in the big ring, Voigt looks like he’s suffering for every inch of road. He’s got just over 5km to go and a lead of just over a minute on the bunch. He knows it’s not enough, but he still goes on. There is, after all, the faint hope that they’ll spend their time looking at one another and not looking for him.
Behind him an uneasy peace exists. The pace is high but nobody is willing just yet to make a move. The first to go is the Colombian Mauricio Soler, who won the mountains jersey at the Tour two years ago and has done nothing much since. Soler’s attack lacks conviction and he’s quickly reeled in. However the net result is that the pace has increased markedly. Up the road Voigt signals to the motorbike cameraman that he’s cooked. Seconds later, the bunch roads the corner and swallows him whole.
On the final kilometre Soler goes again and this time gets his gap. But there are too many behind him hungry for this win. Shortly before the line he’s hauled in. It’s a straight up fight between Danilo Di Luca and Stefano Garzelli, with the Killer proving he has the edge. While Di Luca had the additional motivation of possibly inheriting the maglia rosa from his team mate Alessandro Petacchi, that honour falls to Columbia’s young Swede Thomas Lövkvist who rode a great stage and finished with the leading bunch, leaving him a mere two seconds ahead of Di Luca in the overall.
As expected, today’s stage didn’t see the overall contenders attack each other. However it was hard enough to show who was off the pace, in this case Lance Armstrong. The American was dropped in the closing kilometre and finished fifteen seconds shy of his rivals. That in itself is relatively insignificant, but the fact he was dropped indicates that his fitness is a little bit off where it should be. With another mountain top finish on the cards tomorrow, some of his rivals may decide to put him under the cosh and eliminate his threat entirely before he can ride himself into better form.
Irishman Philip Deignan meanwhile had a bad day at the office, crashing on the earlier Croce d’Aune climb and breaking his rear derailleur. He finished the day more than ten minutes down on the leading bunch and said the pain from the crash prevented him from battling back up to the front. Hopefully he will recover over the next few days.
