Giro d'Italia

Stage 13: Biella – Santuario di Oropa (ITT)


Bruzeghin sets the by far best early time. 28’35’’

Gustav prefers his TT’s without mountains, but still manage 11th best time.

Lasse would usually enjoy mountains more than Gustav, but today he is three seconds slower.

Tanel Kangert is having one of the best day in his career setting new best time in 28’21’’

Scarponi is looking to redeem himself after yesterdays timeloss.

The more mountain Quintana can get on his TT’s the happier he gets. Today he is happy enough to set new best time in 27’18’’. 21 seconds faster than Scarponi.

Fuglsang is really motivated to defend his spot in the top 10 today, and fights his way to provisional 5th on the stage.

In the end everyone is mostly excited about the battle between Contador and Antón.

Contador gets provisional best. Antón is 15 seconds slower.

Stage Results

Stage 14: Cantu’ – Bergamo


Approaching the mountain Christopher has gotten away along with 8 others. Voigt being the best climber in there and Kreder the fastest on the line. They have 5’22’’ to the peloton when they start climbing.

Christopher takes charge on the climb reducing the group to 4 riders at the top and regaining the mountain jersey.
On the second climb things explode in the main group and 5 km from the top the break is over.

On the descent Contador goes on the attack pushing his limits. And tasting the tarmac. It doesn’t look too good as he’s lying there on his back.

Going in to the last 3 km Daniel Martin decides to attack. Jakob decides to follow in spite of having followed a lot of attacks the last 15 km. At this point Contador is 1’30’’ behind the front group.

1 km to go and Martin is leading in the fast downhill sprint.

Jakob holds 2nd place until 100 m from the finish line.
On the line De Greef cheers and Antón takes the stage.

Giro d'Italia

Stage 15: Trento – Tre Cime de Lavaredo


Juul-Jensen tried to get in an early break to pick up some mountain points, but Euskaltel – Euskadi is in a mean mood today making the race hard right from the start.
Le Mevel managed to get away up the Passo San Pellegrino, but Christopher got 2nd without much controversy.

With 50 km to go things start to get serious as the Saxo – Tinkoff train starts positioning. Le Mével still has 4’36’’ to the peloton.

Going in to the last 3 km Evans starts attacking in the front group.
Fuglsang is in a group 1’40’’ behind. We had hoped he would last longer, but he get dropped by better climbers, so no shame in that.

Antón rides to a beautiful solo win.

Jakob gives it all he’s got today but ends up losing a lot of time. Much more than expected...

30 riders missed the timelimit. We will have to do without Morten Brink for the rest of the race, but we honestly didn’t expect him to pull through the entire race anyway so that's OK. Other noticeable riders leaving are Nizzolo, Wagner, Eisel, Chicchi and Kruopis.

Stage 16: Agordo – Lienz


Christopher goes out to defend the mountain jersey and takes the points uncontested. The seven riders in the front group has 6 minutes to the peloton at this point.

Euskaltel seems content in front of the peloton allowing the break to get a gap of 15’30’’ with 50 km to go.

There’s at least three or four better sprinters than Christopher in the group so with 5,5 km left I tell him to go for it rather than wait for a hopeless sprint.

In the end De Marchi takes the stage win in a confusing sprint as they catch up with the rear end of the peloton on the circuit.

8 km to go and Ludvigsson sets up Fuglsang for an attack. Jakob gets a gap of just over half a minute, hopefully he will be able to keep the gap and gain some of the lost ground.
Unfortunately not as he is caught within the last 100 m of the stage.

Giro d'Italia

Stage 17: Lienz – Monte Zoncolan


No breaks get away at first, but with 15 km to the first KOM Juul-Jensen tags along with Pate and Popkov. Christopher gets the five points easy and is a little closer to securing the jersey.

The peloton let them slip away knowing that they’ll be easy to catch on the final climb. Christopher works hard on the second hill and gets full reward for his efforts. The jersey should be safe for at least another day and I tell Christopher to take it easy for the rest of the day.
Meanwhile things are starting to heat up in the peloton.

Going into Zoncolan Kolobnev and Rutkiewicz has two minutes to the favourites.

For Jakob the climb is all about survival. Getting up in his own speed without exploding. This is quite far from what we dreamed about before the Giro started.

Once again Antón proves the strongest among the favourites.

What worse it that the race directors decided that Antón should get the mountain jersey in spite of not having more points than Christopher!
If this is how the standing is when we hit Milano I will certainly complain to the UCI!!