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Tour of Lombardy: Bettini and Evans set
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While two-time defending world champion Paolo Bettini (Quick Step-Innergetic) is heavily favored to score his third consecutive Tour of Lombardy victory on Saturday, the venerable 242km fall classic is not the only title in play. The 2007 ProTour series is also up for grabs because the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) this week handed longtime ProTour leader Danilo Di Luca (Liquigas) a three-month suspension for his implication in the 2004 Oil for Drugs scandal, which caused the UCI to drop him from the standings.
These developments put the consistent Cadel Evans (Predictor-Lotto) into the leader’s white jersey. At first it looked as though the Aussie would have a fight on his hands, with three riders sitting within 45 points — and 50 points available for Saturday’s winner. But current runner-up Alberto Contador (Discovery Channel) has ended his season already; and third–place Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Épargne), the defending ProTour champion, was scratched by his team Friday evening.
This means that only three-time world champ Oscar Freire (Rabobank) can mathematically overtake Evans — but the Spanish sprinter has never finished better than 13th in this climbers’ classic, and that was seven years ago. Evans, however, finished fourth at the 2004 Tour of Lombardy and is one of the dark horses for the win this year.
Besides enjoying his best-ever season, highlighted by his second place at the Tour de France, Evans has a few other things going for him Saturday. First, he lives only 10km from the new starting town of Varese. Second, his Italian wife’s family will be out on the course to encourage him. And third, his teammates Chris Horner (the only American starter Saturday) and Dario Cioni are in good form and ready to bring Evans to the head of the race on the course’s vital climb, the daunting Madonna del Ghisallo, 45km from the finish in Como.
A week ago, at the very hilly Giro del Emilia, Horner placed third and Evans sixth, performances that proved their healthy appetite for late-season racing. The winner of that event was Luxembourg’s Fränk Schleck (CSC) ahead of Italy’s Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner), both of whom will be challenging Bettini’s supremacy on Saturday.
Schleck is on a streak of good form that began with his fourth place at the
2007 Tour de France |
| 5-star - Bettini, Cunego4-star - Evans, Rebellin, Sanchez, Schleck, Wegmann3-star - Bertolini, Dekker, Horner, Pozzato, Ricco, Siutsou, Visconti |
Stuttgart world’s (Evans was fifth there), and he will have strong support from his CSC colleagues, who are set to win the ProTour’s team classification for the third year in a row. Besides his younger brother Andy, Schleck can count on world’s silver medalist Alexandr Kolobnev of Russia, seasoned Dutch classics rider Karsten Kroon, and Vuelta a España podium finisher Carlos Sastre.
As for Rebellin, the 36-year-old triggered the winning break in Stuttgart and has been training harder than ever this week, trying to find the form that netted him victory at the Flèche Wallonne earlier this year. If Rebellin has on off-day, his German teammate Fabian Wegmann, who was third at the 2006 Tour of Lombardy, is ready to be the Gerolsteiner leader.
Others in the 179-man field who look capable of challenging Bettini in this 101st edition of what many regard as the world’s most spectacular one-day race include last year’s surprise runner-up Samuel Sanchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi), the 2004 winner Damiano Cunego (Lampre-Fondital), coming-back-to-form Riccardo Riccò (Saunier Duval-Prodir), Dutch prodigy Thomas Dekker (Rabobank), and the talented Belarus rider Kanstantin Siutsou.
Since the Lombardy classic returned three years ago to its once-traditional Como finish it has produced three magnificent races. In 2004, four riders emerged from the hills to contest the sprint, with Cunego taking the win ahead of Michael Boogerd, Ivan Basso and Evans. In 2005, Bettini was the fastest finisher ahead of Gilberto Simoni and Schleck. And last year, Bettini dropped his last rival, Wegmann, on the San Fermo della Battaglia hill, just 5km from the finish alongside Lake Como.
The absence of Valverde has made Evans’s job of clinching the ProTour title much easier, but the biggest absentee is perpetual protagonist Boogerd (Rabobank), 35. This would have been the popular Dutchman’s final big race at the end of an exemplary 14-year-long career, but an untimely crash put him in the hospital with a knee infection last weekend. It was too painful for him to contemplate starting such an exacting race, so his career will now end Sunday in a farewell criterium in the Dutch city of Valkenburg — where he’ll reportedly ride on a tandem because of his knee injury.
Should Bettini again win Lombardy, he will become only the third rider in race history to win the race three times in succession, following Fausto Coppi (who took four wins from 1946 to 1949) and Alfredo Binda (1924-26).
At 242km and with 10,000 feet of climbing (and descending) over six major hills, the Lombardy course is perfect for those, like Bettini, who have explosive power — either to make a decisive attack on a 14-percent grade or to out-sprint breakaway companions on the flat finish in Como.
From the start in Varese (where the 2008 world’s are to be held), the undulating course heads east through green hills before making a complete clockwise circuit of the mountain-ringed, Y-shaped Lake Como. The route leaves the lakeshore three times, up to the Passo Intelvi at 56km, up the Parlasco climb at 136km, and up to the Madonna del Ghisallo, the day’s steepest and highest climb, at 197km.
The winning break the past three years has formed on the Ghisallo, with the final selection coming on the stair-step climb to Civiglio with 15km to go. This is followed by one of the most technical downhills — extremely narrow, steep and twisting — that the ProTour racers face all year. It plunges into the streets of Como before the riders hit the last steep, narrow climb to San Fermo della Battaglia. Between there and the finish is one more fast descent before the flat final 2km.
Temperatures in the mid-50s and pale sunshine are forecast for Saturday afternoon, which will encourage tens of thousands of fans to flock to the steep slopes of the Ghisallo. There, at the cyclists’ chapel, they will honor the 1961 winner Vito Taccone, who died this week.
