Stage 6
The first breakaway of the race would succeed on stage 6 as the small bergs of the early race gave way for some bigger climbs. A large breakaway formed early on and established a break of around 4-5 minutes on the chasing peleton.
The lumpy profile started to have an effect on overnight [...]
As I haven’t been racing recently and there really isn’t any other international racing of interest lately, this week’s Weekly Wrap has been replaced with a round-up of all the happenings at this year’s first Grand Tour.
Thankfully, this has provided plenty to talk about, given what has transpired over the last few days so [...]
A changing of the guard occurred before the 2010 Giro d’Italia. None of the previous three champions were present: Di Luca was serving a doping ban, and Alberto Contador and Denis Menchov both focused on the Tour de FRance instead. Additionally, on the eve of the race, Franco Pellizotti was suspended by his team for [...]
The 2009 Giro d’Italia finally saw some respite for the sprinters, who had been given limited opportunities in the few previous races, particularly 2008. Of course, nobody cared much for the plight of the sprinters due to what had occurred over the previous few months. 7-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong announced his return [...]
The Course
The 2011 Giro course was one of the most brutal and ludicrous ever devised, which eventually fostered negative racing due to a bid to conserve energy by the favourites. The 2011 Tour de France showed that you don’t need to cross 5 massive climbs every day to make the racing exciting [...]
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The course for the 2008 Giro d’Italia was one of the toughest ever devised. Of the 9 open-road stages of the first half of the race, only 3 were classed as truly flat. The remainder were medium mountain, most of which had at least one difficult climb that would isolate the contenders. Similarly, the second half [...]
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Local
There was plenty of racing going on in Melbourne over the weekend. Carnegie Caulfield Cycling Club held their final crit of the season and Sunbury held a Kermesse race at Diggers’ Rest. I made the trip out to Glenvale to race the crit but a grading mix-up meant I missed my start time and [...]
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The 2007 race would prove to be well-remembered one for all the wrong reasons. In the wake of the Floyd Landis case at the 2006 Tour de France and the rising spectre of Operacion Puerto, defending champion Ivan Basso succumbed and withdrew from the race before it began. Given Basso’s commanding win in [...]
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Paolo Savoldelli returned to the 2006 Giro d’Italia looking for his third win in the race (having previous won the 2002 and 2005 Giros). Similarly, Gilberto Simoni was vying for his third. Up until that point, Ivan Basso had largely disappointed. After finishing third and second respectively (behind Lance Armstrong) at the 2004 [...]
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Having won the previous 7 Giros d’Italia, the Italians had had a good run. However, there were now a keen bunch of riders nipping at their heels trying to break the Italian lockout Simoni, Garzelli, Savoldelli and Cunego had kept the Italian house in order but they had come under recent fire from the Ukrainians, in [...]
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