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Pellizotti pounces at Blockhaus; Menchov defends lead
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Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas) climbed to a solo victory in stage 17 of the 2009 Giro d'Italia on Wednesday, a short, tough ride from Chieti to Blockhaus.
Danilo Di Luca (LPR Brakes) fought like a wildcat to take time from his rivals, but race leader Denis Menchov (Rabobank) stuck to him like a decal, and Stefano Garzelli (Acqua e Sapone) had the audacity to sucker-punch the Killer at the line for second place on the day.
“I started this Giro with the ambition of winning. To win the Giro is hard, especially this year with the high level of participation and the diffciluty of the course,” Pellizotti said. “We’re making a good Giro, we’re attacking, now we’ve won a stage. I think we deserved to win today and the podium is very much an option.”
2009 Giro d'Italia
- Stage 17: Chieti to Blockhaus
- 83km (51.6 miles)
- Stage winner: Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas) in 2:21:06
- Stage winner's average speed: 35.3 kph (21.9 mph)
- GC leader: Denis Menchov (Rabobank)
- Points jersey: Danilo Di Luca (LPR Brakes)
- Climber's jersey: Stefano Garzelli (Acqua & Sapone)
- Team GC leader: Astana
- Best young rider: Kevin Seeldrayers (Quick Step)
- Most aggressive: Pellizotti
- Previous stage winners/GC leaders:
- Stage 1: Team Columbia-Highroad/Cavendish
- Stage 2: Petacchi/Cavendish
- Stage 3: Petacchi/Petacchi
- Stage 4: Di Luca/Lovkvist
- Stage 5: Menchov/Di Luca
- Stage 6: Scarponi/Di Luca
- Stage 7: Boasson Hagen/Di Luca
- Stage 8: Sivtsov/Di Luca
- Stage 9: Cavendish/Di Luca
- Stage 10: Di Luca/Di Luca
- Stage 11: Cavendish/Di Luca
- Stage 12: Menchov/Menchov
- Stage 13: Cavendish/Menchov
- Stage 14: Gerrans/Menchov
- Stage 15: Bertagnolli/Menchov
- Stage 16: Sastre/Menchov
- Up next:
- Stage 18 is 182km (113.1 miles) from Sulmona to Benevento. The stage starts with a 22km climb to Piano delle Cinque Miglia, then rolls to the finish where a field sprint is likely.
Lance Armstrong (Astana) showed some flash on the ascent to Blockhaus, making a bid to follow Pellozotti's attack, but he and teammate Levi Leipheimer both lost more time on the day as the favorites for the overall rolled up the road without them.
“It was good to see that Lance tried,” said Astana team manager Johan Bruyneel. "He was able to maintain a good rhythm and once we saw that Pellizotti was gone, we were just informing him that Menchov and Di Luca were coming and that was a little too fast. Definitely he is coming to another level again. That's exactly what I hoped for."
“Levi was OK," Bruyneel continued. "We had just to see if what we saw on Monte Petrano is a trend which continues to go down or not. Fortunately we saw that Levi can stay at the same level, maintain his position and climb with the best riders. I am happy about the day."
Menchov had little difficulty staying with Di Luca’s manic attacks, though he did lose the wheel in the final charge to the line.
“The most important thing was to stay with Di Luca until the finish line. In the last 250m, in the end I had too much gear, a little bit tired, I lacked a little rhythm,” Menchov said. “One day I got bonuses, he gets one back, we’re playing a little game with these bonuses. Today was tranquilo.”
Short and decidedly unsweet
The stage was only 83 kilometers long, but it was far from an easy spin. It began with a descent for the first few kilometers and then stayed relatively flat for the next 28km or so. A couple of small, unrated climbs and a short descent followed before the road began its gradual rise to the day’s only climb, a tough haul that began to steepen at the 65km mark. The 18-kilometer climb to the finish averaged 7 percent, but the steep parts reached grades of 13 percent.
The ever-active Thomas Voeckler (Bbox Bouygues Telecom) had an early go and quickly found himself with company: Felix Rafael Cardenas (Barloworld); Giovanni Visconti (ISD–Neri); Ruggero Marzoli and Giuseppe Palumbo (Acqua & Sapone-Caffe Mokambo); Mauro Facci (Quick Step); Matteo Bono (Lampre-N.G.C.); Riccardo Chiarini (LPR Brakes Farnese Vini); Delio Fernandez Cruz and Gonzalo Rabunal Rios (Xacobeo Galicia).
With 49km to go, the LPR and Rabobank teams were sharing the chase work, keeping the gap around two minutes. By midrace it had gone out slightly, to just over three minutes. The Cervélos then came to the fore and started bringing the gap down.
Voeckler had another dig at the base of the climb that cracked the break into bits. LPR’s Chiarini quickly latched on, along with Cardenas, Marzoli, Gonzalo Rabunal and Delio Fernandez. But their advantage was falling, and 15km from the finish — with the climb just starting to bite — the bunch was coming up fast.
Pellizotti punches it
Sylvester Szmyd (Liquigas) had a go out of the dwindling chase, taking teammate Pellizotti along, and Pellizotti quickly leapt past Cardenas, the sole survivor of the break. Armstrong tried to follow, but got hung up in no-man’s land between the hare and the hounds, led by Francesco Masciarelli (Acqua e Sapone), with Leipheimer in second wheel.
Pellizotti quickly took a lead of 20 seconds over Armstrong and twice that over the maglia rosa group, which was down to 13 riders. And then with a little more than 10km to go Di Luca threw down an attack, followed by Garzelli, Menchov and Ivan Basso (Liquigas).
They quickly caught and shelled Armstrong, with Di Luca pouring it on. The American fell back to Carlos Sastre (Cervélo), who was chugging along some 10 seconds behind, joined by Szmyd and Gilberto Simoni (Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni). Leipheimer, meanwhile, was losing ground once more, sliding to more than a minute behind Pellizotti.
Garzelli was next to fall off the pace, but the king of the mountains leader grimly fought back on a ittle further up the road.
Ahead, with 6km to race Pellizotti had a half-minute on Di Luca, who was getting no help from his three colleagues. A kilometer further up he’d padded that margin by an additional 10 seconds, and with 4km to race he had 42 seconds. The Sastre-Armstrong group was at 1:18 and Leipheimer a further 18 seconds back.
The Killer fires shot after shot, but misses
Di Luca, looking mad enough to take a bite out of his stem, punched it again, losing Basso and Garzelli — but the maglia rosa easily matched the Killer, effort for effort.
As Pellizotti hit the fog-shrouded final kilometer he held an inassailable lead over his pursuers, who once again found themselves rejoined by Garzelli. Three hundred meters from the line the Liquigas rider took one final glance over his shoulder, then rolled across, victorious, with fists in the air.
Di Luca attacked once more, trying to grab the second-place bonus, but Garzelli denied him that small victory. Meanwhile, Menchov settled for fourth on the stage — and yet another day in the maglia rosa.
Fans of Di Luca — who lives in nearby Pescara and attracted thousands up on the high mountain — started to boo Garzelli when he was on the podium to receive his green best climber’s jersey because he pipped Di Luca for the second-place time bonus.
“I did my race, why should I have to let him go ahead to have the bonus?” Garzelli said. “Four seconds won’t make a difference if he wins or not wins the Giro. My principal objective now is to keep the maglia verde, of course, I’d still love to win a stage, Vesuvio is the last chance.”
Armstrong and Leipheimer crossed in a small group some two minutes later.
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