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Bosisio takes 1st summit finish
It was a battle on three fronts in the first mountain stage of the 91st Giro d’Italia, and a preview of the suffering to come.
Up front, Gabriele Bosisio (Team LPR) was the last man standing from a huge mob that peeled away early in the four-climb, 180km romp from Vasto to Pescocostanzo to claim his team’s first Giro stage.
In the middle, Danilo Di Luca (LPR), Riccardo Riccò (Saunier Duval) and Alberto Contador (Astana) revealed they’ll be contenders after they attacked a lead group of favorites to carry home a 50-second prize over their GC rivals.
And finally in the back, Giovanni Visconti (Quick Step) saw his grip on the maglia rosa tighten but his margin to the GC threats shrink as he defended the leader’s jersey despite having some problems against the mountain goats on their favored terrain.
Bosisio bags it
The bumpy 180km leg from served up the Cat. 3 Valico di Macerone, the Cat. 1 Rionero Sanntico, the Cat. 2 Pietransieri and a 2.8km finishing climb with an average grade of 6 percent. Not a bad way to conclude the first week of racing of what’s been an exceedingly difficult Giro.
Early breaks were once again the order of the day. Vasil Kiryienko (Tinkoff) had an early go only to be retrieved, but the pursuit and subsequent high pace split the peloton in two, leaving a 30-something pack out front and maglia rosa Visconti in the second group. Danny Pate was in there to represent Slipstream-Chipotle.
Bosisio made the front group, and worked into an escape with the frisky Kiryienko, Joan Horrach (Caisse d’Epargne), Felix Cardenas (Barloworld), Fortunato Baliani and Emmanuele Sella (CSF Group Navigare) and Simon Spilak (Lampre).
Gravity took its toll on the break, with Horrach and Spilak dropping out of the escape. Then, as the maglia rosa group summited the Rionero Sanntico more than six minutes in arrears, Kanstantin Sivtsov (High Road), Sylvester Szmyd (Lampre), Juan Manuel Garate (Quick Step) and Jurgen Van den Broeck (Silence-Lotto) surged away, to be joined later by Alexander Efimkin (Quick Step) and Mauricio Ardila (Rabobank).
There was no coming back, and the leaders soon began eyeing one another for the prize.
Sella fired the first shot, shelling Cardenas, but flatted and lost all chance of winning the stage. And then Bosisio took a solo flyer and a big gap that he would hold all the way to the finish. Kiryienka held on for second, 46 seconds back, with Sella third, just over a minute behind.
“I really made efforts to win the stage and thought I could do it right from the start,” said a visibly disappointed Sella, who broke out in tears as he crossed the line. “I really thought I could have a bid for victory with Bosisio up until my bad luck at seven kilometers from the finish. I had this puncture and everything went up in smoke.
"I’m still looking for another stage win since Casena (2004). I know I have the green jersey of the best climber, but I'm still not happy.”
Sella did indeed pad his lead in the climbing competition, but it was Bosisio, a 27-year-old rider from Milan who won the Tour of Latium and a pre-Olympic event last year, who claimed his first-ever Giro stage on a day that the team was thinking suited Di Luca.
“We had a plan from the beginning. Pietropolli and I were to try to get into the escapes and Danilo was going to attack. Later the breakaway was going better than expected, so the team decided to try to play my card to win the stage. I thought Danilo was going to win today, but our big goal is to win the Giro with him,” a happy Bosisio said.
“I didn’t learn of Sella’s puncture until after the stage. Compared to my experience in the Giro in 2004, this year it’s a totally different race. There are more escapes and the sprinter teams don’t pull because they don’t think they can win the stage. As a result, this Giro is a lot more tiring.”
Di Luca’s attack
With the breakaway off the front, LPR’s Alessandro Spezialleti began revving it up in the closing 50km on behalf of team leader Di Luca, who was being closely marked by Astana’s Andreas Klöden and Contador.
The pace quickly negated the advantage of the Sivtsov group and put race leader Visconti in the hurt locker. The maglia rosa briefly drifted off the back before being paced back up by world champ Paolo Bettini.
Safely back in the group, Visconti rolled straight up to Gerolsteiner’s Matthias Russ, clad in the white jersey of best young rider, as if to remind him that yes, he was still here; the two were tied on time going into the day’s stage.
And then, bam! Di Luca jumped, joined by Riccardo Riccò (Saunier Duval-Scott) and Alberto Contador (Astana). The three hooked up with Saunier’s Leonardo Piepoli, who had already peeled away, and charged away toward the finish.
Di Luca, Riccò and Piepoli poured everything into their legs to try to gap the other favorites, but also to get rid of the pesky Contador, who brought up the rear.
The Tour champ is the enigma of this Giro. Gaining an invitation only a week before the Giro started, Contador was on the beach sipping a beer when the call came to race in Italy. Contador was able to follow the moves, refusing to take pulls as he kept looking back to see if Klöden and Leipheimer were coming up the road.
“I was on the limit. The three were going a lot harder than I could,” Contador said. “I’m satisfied because I didn’t think I would be at this level.”
Riccò was disappointed the breakaway stayed clear, but took satisfaction that he was able to confirm his candidacy for overall victory while taking some time on some dangerous rivals.
“The stage didn’t turn out the way we had hoped, but we’re satisfied. We see things a little clearer and it’s a good signal for the mountain stages to come,” said Riccò, who looks back at his best after a nasty spill in stage 3 that left him with a dislocated finger.
“Look at Contador — for someone who said he wasn’t fit and that he was at the beach 10 days, he was able to stay with us the entire climb. He’s a phenomenon,” Riccò continued. “We would have liked it had he been able to collaborate with us. Piepoli wanted him to help us, but he wanted nothing to do with it.”
The Di Luca group finished 2:03 behind Bosisio, with Contador fading slightly on the final steeps, conceding six seconds to the Killer.
But they all took time on the other favorites, with Di Luca vaulting up the standings into fourth overall, as it would be another 52 seconds before Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner) led in the main group containing Astana’s Leipheimer and Klöden, Rabobank’s Denis Menchov, LPR’s Paolo Savoldelli and Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni’s Gilberto Simoni.
“This Giro is very tactical, like today with a breakaway of more than 30 riders,” Di Luca said afterward. “How did we do? We won the stage and took valuable seconds from a number of riders.”
Visconti hangs on
Visconti made sure to keep his grip on the pink jersey, drilling it to finish a few seconds ahead of Russ. And behind him, a weary-looking Bettini acknowledged the cheers of the crowd as he rolled slowly toward the line.
Visconti saw his lead increase to nine seconds over Russ, but Bosisio pulled to third within 5:43 and Di Luca to fourth at 7:27 back, cutting into the nine-minute lead the Italian champ enjoyed at the start of the race.
Christian Vande Velde (Slipstream-Chipotle) finished 28th at 3:46 to retain a strong GC position at 24th at 9:17 back.
The 91st Giro continues Saturday with another tough hilltop finish that could create more splits among the ever-desperate favorites. The 208km eighth stage from Rivisondoli to Tivoli tackles a category-2 in the opening 60km followed by a string of unrated hills to the arrival to Tivoli.
The final five kilometers climb 180 vertical meters with ramps as steep as 8 percent, another stage ideal for the likes of Riccò, Bettini and Rebellin.
Gilberto Simoni, the two-time winner of the Giro, said he can’t wait for the arrival of the hard mountains in the final half of the race.
“I’ve never raced a Giro that’s been so hard,” Simoni said. “Usually the first 10 days are quiet and we’re almost going on a stroll, but this year, the race has been very hard. Today I spent a lot of effort, but the road to Milan is still long.”
In fact, there are more than full two weeks of racing to go. —Agence France Presse contributed to this report
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