While Damiano Cunego of Lampre-Fondital returned to his sensational best on Saturday to win a second Tour of Lombardy, three years after he took his first, Cadel Evans was left ruing what might have been. Predictor-Lotto’s remarkable Aussie crossed the line in sixth place, 10 seconds back, to end his season with overall victory in the 2007 UCI ProTour, but he felt he was good enough to have been sprinting for the day’s main prize alongside Cunego and runner-up Riccardo Ricco of Saunier Duval-Prodir.

“I got something in my eye on the descent into Lecco [with 80km to go],” Evans told VeloNews right after the finish, “and I haven’t been able to see since. I kept getting dropped on every descent, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

Despite having to chase back after each of the finale’s tricky downhills, Evans was still one of the strongest on the subsequent climbs. But he wasn’t the only one who experienced bad luck on a day of strong winds and bright sunshine on the tough 242km Lombardy course that circles lake Como in northwest Italy.
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Evans takes the ProTour title to cap off an impressive season

Photo: Graham Watson

Team CSC was at the front of the “bad luck” line — or was their bad luck due to bad riding? By rights, CSC team leader Fränk Schleck should have won the race because he and his teammates had the odds stacked in their favor.

On the day’s major climb, the 8.5km, 6.3-percent Madonna del Ghisallo, CSC’s Carlos Sastre, Andy Schleck (younger brother of Fränk) and Alexandr Kolobnev worked ferociously to see off two-time defending champion Paolo Bettini, and spring an 18-rider group clear of the rest of the 179 starters. The CSC boys kept up the aggression on the next and penultimate climb, the stair-step Civiglio, first with Karsten Kroon and then with the Schleck the elder.

By the Civiglio summit, with 15km to go, just Cunego, Riccò and Evans were left with Schleck, and it looked as though the race was all but over. But after Cunego made an insane descent to gain 10 seconds on Schleck and Riccò, while the semi-blind Evans lost a further 10 seconds — which helped Euskaltel-Euskadi’s Samuel Sanchez to bridge up with Discovery Channel’s Vladimir Gusev— the pace inevitably slowed. And another half-dozen (including Evans’s American teammate Chris Horner) caught up on the flat road leading the final climb.

Fränk Schleck ran into trouble in the run to the finish.

Photo: Graham Watson

The odds were still in CSC’s favor, but in the space of a few minutes Kroon crashed on the Civiglio descent, Fränk Schleck touched wheels with Gusev and fell, and Kolobnev derailed his chain. That left only Andy Scheck in the front group (he would place fourth); but CSC was still the highest placed team on the day, to easily clinch its third consecutive ProTour team championship.

But winning three in a row wasn’t in the cards for two-time defending champion Bettini. Although he overcame his one-minute Ghisallo deficit before the Civiglio climb, Quick Step’s world champion was soon dropped again — and he would finish the race in the final group, 12:49 back.

So Bettini found out the hard way why Italian legends Fausto Coppi and Alfredo Binda remain the only two men to have won three consecutive editions of the Tour of Lombardy in the event’s 103-year history. The reason for that slim success rate is because Lombardy is so hard to win: The six main climbs are more like mountains, the roads are narrow and constantly twisty, and today’s ProTour peloton is more competitive than ever — even nine months after the season opened last January.

Cunego won the race because he was not only very strong, but he was also very crafty. After he followed Riccò’s decisive attacks on the steep 3km climb to San Fermo della Battaglia, he did the minimum amount of work to keep the pair 10 seconds ahead on the 4km descent to the finish in Como.

Cunego played his cards right.

Photo: Graham Watson

“In the final kilometer I stayed on Riccò’s wheel so I could anticipate any move from the riders behind and also be in position for the sprint,” Cunego said. He added that he knows Riccò is no slouch in a sprint, but he wasn’t taking any chances. “I launched it with 200 meters to go, and got a gap right away. After 240 kilometers it’s difficult for everybody”

Asked whether this victory was more memorable than his 2004 Lombardy win — he took that in a sprint over breakaway companions Michael Boogerd, Ivan Basso and Evans — Cunego said, “This was much more important. It’s my first big win since Lombardia three years ago, whereas in 2004 I’d already won 12 races that year, including the Giro d’Italia.”

At age 26, the blond Cunego looks set to take up his career where it was headed before he contracted mononucleosis in 2005. There’ll probably be another Lombardy in his destiny, and another Giro — most likely a first Tour de France. He’s that sort of rider. But then, only great champions can win the Tour of Lombardy.

Results
1. Damiano Cunego (I), Lampre-Fondital, at 5:52:48
2. Riccardo Ricco (I), Saunier Duval-Prodir, at 0:00
3. Samuel Sanchez Gonzalez (Sp), Euskaltel-Euskadi, at 0:10
4. Andy Schleck (Lux), CSC, at 0:10
5. Davide Rebellin (I), Gerolsteiner, at 0:10
6. Cadel Evans (Aus), Predictor-Lotto, at 0:10
7. Luca Mazzanti (I), Ceramica Panaria-Navigare, at 0:10
8. Thomas Dekker (Nl), Rabobank, at 0:10
9. Giovanni Visconti (I), Quick Step-Innergetic, at 0:16
10. Christopher Horner (USA), Predictor-Lotto, at 0:16
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