Post
by iBanesto » Sat May 15, 2010 6:53 pm
This first week is madness, 7 stages and the 20th on GC is 6 minutes down. I've never seen something like that before. Let's focus on what happened today, because the GC might look different tomorrow when we get the first real climb. GC won't change much between Terminillo and Monte Grappa, plenty of time for discussion then.
Once again a crash made the race. Liquigas went down and took Scarponi and Sastre with them. I don't know what had happened to Sastre before that, maybe he had to chase back to the big group on the first climb even before the decisive crash. That would explain his extreme lack of power on the final climb, he lost three minutes on Nibali and Basso. Nibali himself was going ok, he definitly was faster than Basso who once again had trouble cornering. Scarponi blew my mind, he was in front of Nibali after the crash, then he was caught by Nibali before the climb and rode away solo on the climb. He lost NO time at all to the front group on a 15 km solo effort and took a minute out of Basso and Nibali. Without the crash he would have fought for the stage victory. Evans was the one who preserved his forces more wisely than Vino and thus won in the end. Vino rode like he always does, if he feels good he attacks, if he doesn't feel good he attacks nevertheless. Evans calmly countered his attacks, just like Cunego kept cool on the long climb. Garzelli blew up on the last kicker because he did too much in the chase. Cunego made an impressive jump to the front. Pinotti... he seemed like he really couldn't go one second faster, unlike the Top 3, they all looked like they had another attack in their legs. In the end, if you take the crash into consideration, todays performance looks like that:
A:Evans, Vino, Cunego, Scarponi
B:Garzelli, Pinotti
C:Nibali, Gerdemann, Bakelandts & Co
D:Basso, Karpets & Co
Subjective and without riders that didn't factor today.