The Tour of Wellington is now on it's fourth race day, so here you get a small update from how we are doing down there.
Stage two
Stage two provided the hardest challenge in this stage, with a hard uphill finish.
The second stage of the race was the one where we were expecting some attacks between the pre-race favourites on the uphill towards the finish line. The race developed just like that, with some really strong attacks at the end of the stage. Close to the top of the climb, the decisive move came. Volkswagen-Siemens' Alexander Flügel launched a very strong attack and was followed by Rapha Condor's Chris Froome.
Flügel making his move, and Froome covering it.
Those two quickly built up a large gap back to what was left of the peloton. On the final little kickup to the finish line, Flügel managed to crack Froome and win the stage. The yellow jersey of Kennaugh was dropped early, so Flügel also pulls on the leaders jersey after this win. Froome finished second, just a few seconds behind Flügel. A strong performance by both of them.
Flügel celebrating his stage win after getting rid of Froome in the sprint.
The sprint for third place was won by Red Bull's Kim Kirchen, who managed to create a small gap back to the rest of the group together with his team mate Mori and Fabian Wegmann (Trilux). Best placed Ferrari rider was Cristiano Salerno in 16th place, at the same time as the rest of the peloton. Also Mauro Santambrogio managed to stay in the group over the climb and finished in 20th place.
After the hard test on stage two, the third stage gave the riders a nice, flat stage without any major difficulties. A six-man breakaway moved clear early in the stage. The riders were: Bennett (Oz), McLay (Cyclevox), Stallaert (Bpost), Meiji's Wei and Shikai and finally our youngster Stefano Agostini. Agostini did a good job, winning both the intermediate sprints on the route, before the group was caught with just under ten kilometres to go.
Agostini collected plenty of sprint points by winning the intermediate sprints.
After the breakaway group was caught it was set up for a mass sprint finish. Trilux and Puma did their best to give their sprinters a good leadout coming into the final kilometres. Race leader Flügel was obviously feeling good today, since he was trying to get a good position just behind the Puma guys. On the wheel of Flügel was Emanuele Rizza, who managed to get a better position than yesterday.
The two sprint trains, with Rizza just behind the yellow jersey of Flügel.
As we came closer to the finish line, Trilux's train faded away and Wegmann decided to follow the Puma train instead. Unfortunately for us, Flügel decided to drop back, pushing Rizza away from his nice position. He wasn't the only one with a bad position, though. Just beside him was the stage winner from the day before yesterday, Peter Kennaugh, Focus' Romain Feillu and Jerome Giaux from Red Bull.
The Puma riders leading out Gasparotto, while Rizza was pushed back.
Unfortunately for them, Gasparotto couldn't finish off his team mates great work to set him up. As soon as the sprint kicked off he was passed by Fabian Wegmann, who took the stage win by a mile. Gasparotto held off CSC-Orbea's Rui Costa for third, while Rizza came back with great speed to finish fourth. Mauro Santambrogio once again did well, finishing just outside the top 10, while the rest of the team stayed safely inside the peloton, with Salerno defending his 16th place in the overall.
The second stage of the Tour de San Luis provided one of three hard uphill finishes. Our hope for a good result was on Przemyslaw Niemiec, but it was another Ferrari rider who managed to put his name on this stage. A group of eight broke away from the peloton early in the stage and formed the day's long breakaway. Among them was a Ferrari rider, Cristiano Salerno. Cristiano had very good legs today and managed to win the first KoM sprint and take second on the other one. At this point they still held a lead of 7' back to the peloton.
Salerno was very active in the breakaway, collecting some KoM points.
When the leading group reached the final climb up to the finish line, they still held a lead of 2'. Cristiano still had very good legs and managed to crack all his companions up the climb! In the peloton all the favourites were playing poker and watching each other. Unfortunately for us, our team leader Przemyslaw Niemiec was blocked by some weaker riders and got caught behind a split, together with Pirelli leader Jurgen Van den Broeck.
Salerno starting to crack his breakaway companions.
Niemiec never made it back to the peloton, but this stage ended in a great way for us anyway, as Cristiano Salerno held off all challengers and won the stage! This was a great time to win a stage, since this win made us complete the first of our goals this season, a stage win in Tour de San Luis! Cristiano also takes over both the race lead and the King of the Mountains jersey. A great day for us!
Salerno was the strongest on the climb and held on to win the stage!
Interviewer: Less than a month until you start your season. How do you feel at the moment? Caruso: I'm feeling really good. The atmosphere in the team is great and the team manager is a clever man who knows how to speak to his riders.
Interviewer: Speaking about the team, why did you choose a new, relatively unknown team in front of some top teams who were also interested in you? Caruso: I felt like trying something new. The offer Ferrari gave me was very nice and the opportunity to be the absolute leader in the team brought me here.
Interviewer: Do you feel like you did a good choice picking Ferrari as your new team? Caruso: Definitely. The team works really well together and the management works really hard to make everyone happy.
Interviewer: Rumours says that you're aiming for a good result in your first race, The Tour of Langkawi. Comments? Caruso: Hopefully the team will have a good race. It's one of the most important ones during the season, since our sponsors are expecting a Top 5 overall from us. I will share the leaders role with Przemyslaw and we will do our best to make sure that one of us finishes high up in the overall. It doesn't matter whether it's me or Przemyslaw.
Interviewer: What's your biggest goal this season? Caruso: I would of course love to take a win in my home race, Giro del Trentino. It's another of the team's goals and the manager has told me that everyone has full belief in me. I just hope that I will have my best legs in the big mountains there.
Interviewer: Any other races you're looking forward to? Caruso: Yes of course. Especially two of my other home races, Brixia Tour and Giro dell'Emilia. The Brixia route suits my abilities quite well, so I hope that I will be able to deliver good results there. Also the Romanian race, Transfagarasan GP will be very interesting with lots of strong names participating. I'm also really motivated for the Liechtenstein Grand Prix, the race we enter via a wild card.
Interviewer: Thank you for the interview and good luck in your season. Caruso: Thanks.
After showing his capacity in the Tour de San Luis last month, Cristiano Salerno today demonstrated that it wasn't just a lucky shot by finishing in 4th place in his home race, the Strade Bianchi.
The Strade Bianche - The race on white roads.
The race began with lots of riders trying to get themselves into the breakaway, but every time there was a team who weren't satisfied with the riders in it. One of the most active ones was Stefano Agostini, who attacked and attacked and attacked in the first part of the race. It took a long time, but a breakaway did manage to establish. Agostini missed it, but managed to join them a bit later. The three riders who made the break together with Agostini were Vansummeren (Bpost), Costa (CSC-Orbea) and Appleby (Rapha).
The three escapies later became four with Agostini joining them.
Agostini didn't feel as strong as usual, so we decided to try something from the peloton. Salerno punched away and was caught by Hermans (Rothaus) and Wyss (Saab). The three cooperated really well and managed to distance the pack while they reduced the gap to the front four.
Salerno tried a long-range attack with over 75 kms to go.
At almost the same time as Salerno attacked, Agostini had to let his three companions go. Not much to do about it, and it was still nice to see the youngster on the attack. That meant we now had a leading trio, whose gap now had stabilized around 4 minutes.
Costa's pace was too much for Agostini, and he had to let them go.
The front trio was much stronger than expected and Salerno's group wasn't able to close them down. With five kilometers to the line it looked like they had secured the victory. The question was: Who of them had most power left? Appleby had attacked a few times and might not be as fresh as the other two. Vansummeren had taken a lot of the work though, which made it look like Costa would be the man to beat.
The trio was too strong for Salerno & Co. and was going to battle it out for the win.
In the steep final kilometer it became visible that Costa did have the best legs as he started to open a gap on his two companions. None of them were able to close it and the Portuguese held on to take the win easily. Appleby outsprinted Vansummeren for second, but the most interesting thing for us was behind all this.
Costa was the strongest up the steep climb to the finish.
Good news! Salerno managed to drop both Hermans and Wyss and held off the big favourites to pick up the 4th place. A very good result considering how weak Salerno is compared to the other favourites on the paper. Agostini was caught and passed by the whole peloton and finished back in 37th. Still a very successful race for us.
After a little break in the Management Game calendar we're now back ready to race again. Our next race is the Tour of Langkawi. It's nine stages long, with seven of those being pan flat ones for the pure sprinters. It will still not be enough for them to challenge for the overall though, as there is two really hard mountain stages in the race as well.
The following riders will be representing us in Malaysia:
Caruso
Gianpaolo
D'Amore
Crescenzo
Dall'Antonia
Tiziano
Girardi
Edoardo
Maisto
Massimiliano
Osella
Marco
Rizza
Emanuele
As many other times, we're sending an all-Italian squad. It's Gigi Caruso's first race of the season and we hope that he is fit enough to take on the two mountain top finishes in a good way. A Top 5 overall here is one of our goals this season, so it's a quite important race for us. All the team believes in Caruso, and hopefully we'll see him celebrating up in Genting Highlands on stage 5.
The two crucial stages in this race, and also the place where we hope to see Caruso in action.
The race won't be all about Caruso for us though. For the sprints we have D'Amore, Rizza and Dall'Antonia with us. D'Amore is on paper the fastest of them, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he will be the one we'll be trying to set up. Daily form and energy left will decide who gets to be our main man for the sprints. We're not expecting a stage win from the sprints, but a podium or two would give us some well-needed points.
Some more of these would be nice.
The competition then? Well, it's quite strong. Names such as Castaño, Marzano and Gadret are all here with the same goal as us - the overall win. Those three will probably be the main challengers, but you can never discount riders like Schwab, Kern, Stetina and Agudelo. Especially the latest one might be dangerous considering how strong his team has been this season. In other words - there's many about it. We just hope that Caruso will be able to respond to the attacks that definitely will come.
Here's the full list of riders participating in the race:
Spoiler
Ferrari
1. G. Caruso
2. C. D'Amore
3. T. Dall'Antonia
4. E. Girardi
5. M. Maisto
6. M. Osella
7. M. Possoni
8. E. Rizza
Pirelli
11. C. Castaño
12. A. Bazajev
13. S. Boggia
14. D. Caccia
15. H. Dupont
16. A. Flaksis
17. N. Kinney
18. E. Murgoitio
Team VW
21. M. Marzano
22. W. Anacona
23. G. Brenes
24. K. Predatsch
25. G. Preidler
26. F. Sabatini
27. D. Schorn
28. R. Zabel
Red Bull
31. J. Gadret
32. J. Cooper
33. R. Kilun
34. A. Moinard
35. D. Moreno
36. B. Sonnery
37. G. Tzortzakis
38. KS. Wu
Bianchi
41. H. Schwab
42. G. Ciolek
43. K. Gil
44. G. Lequatre
45. S. Locatelli
46. O. Martynenko
47. A. Matzbacher
48. K. Vantornout
The Tour of Langkawi has started off nicely for us. The opening stage was a bit disappointing with Rizza being our best placed rider in 11th place. Even more frustrating, our three sprinters didn't even try to help each other and rode for their own chances. However, stage 2 ended up in a completely different way for us. And it wasn't a negative way.
The second stage provided a small uphill sprint.
Before the start of stage number two we had a little tactical meeting, where we decided that Dall'Antonia would be our sprinter, since the uphill favours him a lot over Rizza and D'Amore, who both have problems on every speed bump. It proved to be a good decision. In the beginning of the sprint it looked really bad for us though, as neither Dall'Antonia or any of our other riders were to be seen near the front, while other sprinters like Cavendish and Napolitano were well-placed.
It looked really bad for us as the sprint began.
Fortunately for us, Dall'Antonia managed to come back to the front out of nowhere as we hitted the steep final kilometer. He was the fastest for the moment, but Sonnery and Napolitano were still going strong. But in the end it turned out that nobody could match Dall'Antonia's acceleration and stop him from picking up the stage win in a close finish against Sonnery. Our third win of the season was now a fact. Gigi Caruso also finished strongly today, taking 17th place. Looks good for the crucial stages.
Dall'Antonia celebrating his stage win, and also taking over the race lead.
Gipo Caruso has shown why he is in Malaysia as we've reached the hard part of the Langkawi Tour. The ambience in the team was on top after Dall'Antonia's win on stage two. Caruso told me that he was feeling great and planned to try something when we reached his terrain. He certainly didn't lie.
The hard part of this race began on stage three.
Stage three is the easiest of the three crucial stages, but it's definitely not pleasant for the riders. The pace was incredibly high already up the biggest climb of the day, dropping a lot of riders, including race leader Dall'Antonia. Caruso still had help left in the shape of Osella, Possoni and Maisto though.
The pace up the climb was too much for Dall'Antonia.
Later in the stage we took the command to set up Caruso for an attack up the final climb. Maisto was dropped up the next climb, but Osella and Possoni still had power left to push on for Caruso. As we started climbing up the finishing climb for the last time, Caruso made his move. That means work finished for Osella and Possoni, who could now drop back and save themselves for the coming stages.
Caruso jumping from the favourite group.
Only two others were able to follow Caruso; Marco Marzano (Volkswagen) and French champ John Gadret (Jayco-Red Bull). The trio entered the final kilometer together and a look back from Caruso was smartly capitalized by Marzano to nip past the Italian champion. Marzano's smart acceleration created some space between himself and the two national champs.
Marzano's sneaky acceleration gapped the other two.
Caruso realised the danger and tried to close the gap, but it was too late. Marzano just held off Caruso to win the stage with Gadret in third. A second group closed down the gap in the end and nine riders were given the same time. Marzano also took the yellow jersey, with Caruso lying in third, eight seconds behind his fellow countryman.
Marzano's gap proved to be enough to hold off Caruso for the stage win.
Stage three result:
1
Marco Marzano
VolksWagen - Siemens
4h32'39
2
Gianpaolo Caruso
Ferrari - ERG
s.t.
3
John Gadret
Jayco - Red Bull
s.t.
4
Carlos Castaño
Pirelli - Alfa Romeo
s.t.
5
Koldo Gil
Team Bianchi
s.t.
6
Amaël Moinard
Jayco - Red Bull
s.t.
7
Hubert Schwab
Team Bianchi
s.t.
8
Sylwester Szmyd
Hollister
s.t.
9
Daniel Moreno
Jayco - Red Bull
s.t.
10
Christophe Kern
Pokerstars.com
+ 45
Stage four provides another level of difficulty.
Confident of Caruso's strength, we controlled the peloton during the whole stage. Up the big climb of the day Maisto took charge, reducing the peloton to just over thirty riders. Still no attacks from the field, but that was understandable seeing the distance left to the finish.
Maisto and Possoni pushing the pace up the climb.
Close to the top of the incredibly long climb we finally got some attacks, with Marzano putting in a small dig, quickly covered by Gadret. Caruso was a bit blocked at the moment of the acceleration and couldn't respond immediately, but went after them not far later together with Sylwester Szmyd (Hollister).
Marzano and Gadret going, and Caruso chasing them.
Pirelli brought them all back though and a group of 18 was set to battle it out for the stage win. Possoni and Osella used their last bit of energy to set up the sprint for Caruso. What a help they've been for Caruso all day. They finished their work and then dropped back, forcing Caruso to find a position for the sprint by himself.
Osella, Possoni and Maisto - brilliant helpers during the stage.
Caruso managed to find a perfect position and when the sprint kicked off he blasted past everyone and into the lead. Marzano was blocked behind Schwab and Moreno and wasn't able to move forward. The big threat to Caruso looked to be Gadret, who were trying to come up alongside him inside the final kilometer.
Caruso motoring clear inside the final kilometer.
In the end noone could match Caruso and he had plenty of time to celebrate a well-deserved stage win after all the work his teammates did for him. Gadret took second ahead of Jayco-RB teammate Moreno, while Marzano just missed out the bonus seconds in 4th. That was good for Caruso, since it meant that he took over the yellow jersey from Marzano. He now leads both Marzano and Gadret by 12 seconds in the general classification.
Journalist: A bad crash destroyed your hopes for an overall result in the Tour of Langkawi. What comes to your mind when you look back at the race? Caruso: Well, of course a lot of anger and disappointment. I had great legs all the race and was fighting for the overall win when that crash destroyed everything. I'm sure I'd have been on the podium if it wasn't for the crash.
Journalist: How did the crash happen? Caruso: I'm not 100% sure what caused it, but I was riding with my team mates in the peloton and suddenly - Bang, riders were falling in front of me. I had no chance to avoid the fall and did my best to land on the ground as comfortable as possible.
Journalist: What were you thinking at that point? Caruso: The pace was really high at the time of the crash and I immediately thought that my GC position was endangered. Then I realised that all my team mates had stopped to wait for me, so it was full concentration on trying to get back.
Journalist: Some other riders who were involved in that crash has critized UniCredit for continuing to push the pace and not letting the fall victims come back. What do you think? Caruso: A race is a race. It was close to the finish and they were doing their best to prepare the sprint. I'm not sure they even knew about the crash until after the finish. I don't blame them for my time loss.
Journalist: What were you thinking when you crossed the line and realised that you had lost over four minutes and dropped out of the Top 5 overall? Caruso: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck...
Journalist: Do you have any injuries from the crash? Caruso: Not anymore, but the stages after the crash were a hell to ride through. My whole body was hurting all the time and I seriously considered to retire a few times, but I decided to try and defend my Top 10 place in the overall.
Journalist: You were also involved in a second crash a couple of stages later. What happened there? Caruso: I have no idea to be honest. I took a right hand turn and rode straight into some riders lying on the ground. I thought: Seriously, what the heck is this? Not again!
Journalist: Do you think that the crashes might affect your performances in the next races? Caruso: I don't think so. The pain from the crashes are over and the team doctor has told me that I've recovered really well.
Journalist: What are your plans for your coming races? Caruso: Well, my biggest goal is the next race, Giro del Trentino. The team are expecting an overall win there and I'm pumped with revenge to do it. The route fits me really well and hopefully it will end up a bit better for me than Langkawi did.
Journalist: Thank you for the interview. Any last words? Caruso: I want to say thank you to all the fans who has supported me all the time and helped me through the hard time after the crashes.
After the crumbled dream in Langkawi, a highly motivated Gianpaolo Caruso went to our most important race of all, the Giro del Trentino, with plans on doing what he was on his way doing when he crashed out in Langkawi.
The opening prologue went about as expected, with Caruso finishing just outside the Top 10. A very good start, considering the very strong startlist. Our hope for that day, Niemiec, on the other hand disappointed a bit, taking on the course in the same time as Caruso. We had hoped that he could push himself inside the Top 10 on this occasion. Well, well, you can't get everything.
Caruso's Trentino adventure started in a positive way.
Day two of racing provided the first of two hard mountain stages in this four day event. Probably even a bit harder than the second one, since this one takes on two incredibly hard climbs. Action was expected on the final climb to San Martino di Castrozza, so we just hoped that Gianpaolo would have a good day.
The first day in the mountains, and a really hard day in the saddle.
It turned out to be an excellent day for us, as Caruso was able to respond to all attacks and also finished ahead of most favourites. A late breakaway from Cal Giant's Peter Stetina caught the big names by surprise, allowing the young American to ride home solo. Home favourite Pozzovivo led home the favourites about a minute later, with Caruso finishing just behind in 6th. He moved up to third overall, under a minute behind Stetina. Perfect start.
Pozzovivo and Nazaret slightly gaps Caruso in the finale.
After that the riders had an easier day of racing, without gaps between the favourites. Then we headed to the final stage of the race, and the second difficult mountain top finish, up the steep slopes of Alpe di Pampeago. A last GC shuffle was to expect, and we once again hoped for Caruso to have a good day.
The second mountain stage, finishing up in the ski town of Pampeago.
It once again proved to be a good day for the Ferrari team, and especially team leader Caruso. The Italian champion once again responded well on the final climb, eventually finishing in third place, beating mountain king Alarcon in a tight sprint. At the front it was once again Vespa's top guy Pozzovivo who cracked everyone with a blistering attack, riding on to a magnificent solo victory atop the Alpe. Fellow team Pirelli's leader Jurgen Van den Broeck also escaped, putting enough time on Caruso to pass him in the overall. Fortunately for us, race leader Stetina lost enough to drop down to 4th overall, with Caruso remaining in third place.
Unstoppable - Nobody could match Pozzovivo on his home roads.
We might have failed our win goal, but we were still very satisfied with the final outcome, looking at all the strong names beaten by Caruso. There was nothing to do about Pozzovivo and Van den Broeck, so a podium were very pleasing. Let's hope the season continues like this, as we're in need of points after the Langkawi bust.
Team News #28: León starts with a clash and ends with a crash
Vuelta a Castilla y León was one of few races in our season where we had no expectations at all on an overall result, seeing we didn't send either Caruso or Niemiec. Therefore our goal was to chase stage wins, with the sprints being the best opportunity.
It started off in the best possible way for us, with Mauro Santambrogio surprising the sprinters with an early solo move, staying clear all the way to the finish, picking up the stage win as well as taking the race lead. In the sprint behind, Tiziano Dall'Antonia made our day even better by taking 9th in the sprint, making it two Ferrari's amongst the ten.
Santambrogio on his way to victory on stage one.
Unfortunately for us, Lady Luck turned her back on us on stage two, and Santambrogio's first day in yellow also became his last. The heavy rain during the day caused a huge pile-up in the final kilometres, taking down both Capecchi and Santambrogio. They found themselves in a grupetto behind the main peloton and never made it back.
With all our riders both being out of contention in the overall and being terrible timetriallists, we could just sit back and watch the time trial on stage four from a spectator seat. In the end it became closer in the overall than expected after an absolutely tremendous ride from Castaño. He won the stage in a dominant way and also moved himself just a few seconds away from Rujano and the overall victory.
Castaño rode his career's best time trial and won the stage.
The final day of the race was an easy looking stage, which the race organizers had decided to set as hilly, even though it barely included any difficulties. Therefore it seemed like a perfect day for Dall'Antonia, who is fitted for exactly those kinds of stages. However, to our disappointment, none of our riders joined the breakaway and none of them kept pace in the peloton, keeping the escapees close. Therefore the breakaway group stayed clear, with WWE's Bauke Mollema taking the stage win from the sprint. Rujano finished safely inside the peloton and could celebrate overall victory as he crossed the line.
Przemyslaw Niemiec once again showed his class in a bigger stage race last week, by finishing third overall in the Tour of Japan. The criterium filled seven day race featured many opportunities for the punchers, and one for the pure climbers, the mountain time trial up Mount Fuji.
To our surprise, Niemiec demonstrated a new level of strength in the hilly criteriums, easily staying in contact with the bigger favourite group and even gaining time on one occasion. He then motored his way up the super hard Mount Fuji, clocking the 6th best time, a shade over a minute behind stage winner, the French champion John Gadret.
Gadret flew up Fuji to a superior stage win.
Niemiec then defended his fourth place overall in the last two tricky criteriums. Or actually not, to be honest. He moved up to third overall in the very last day of racing, because of a crash in the finale that took down fourth overall Gadret, third place Chris Froome and also some other Top 10 riders. Nice surprise for us, even seeing it feels good to gain time because of other riders' bad luck.
Gadret and Froome down in the big crash, moving Niemiec to third overall.
When we last reported from a Management Game race, it was from the Tour of Japan, where our famous single non-Italian Przemyslaw Niemiec showed his high class by finishing up in third overall. The tall Polishman with the hard-spelled name then immediately jumped on a flight down to Spain to prepare well for the mountainous one day race Subida al Naranco. That extra reconnoitring proved useful, as Niemiec's extra knowledge gave him a slight advantage in the very difficult finale.
According to several newspapers and medias, a big clean-out is planned in the Ferrari squad at the end of the season. The rumours speculates about that some of the sponsors aren't very satisfied with parts of the squad so far. The Gazzetta reports that at least one of them has given team DS, Mr. Pellizotti, an ultimatum, forcing him to either get rid of some unwanted riders, or look elsewhere for sponsor money.
Another article also published an unofficial list of the riders whose future in the team is looking very unsure. More or less all the sources for the rumours reports that the rider that has disappointed the sponsors the most is contemplated top sprinter Crescenzo D'Amore. While the team had big hope in him leading the rest of the squad through the mass sprints, the aging Italian has so far seemed to have other plans. Only two top ten results recorded after half the season is, of course, not good enough for a sprinter with his capacity.
Other riders that has been named in the media are Marco Marcato, Pier Graziano Sgrigna, Daniele Pietropolli and Marco Zanotti. All of them appears to currently be a bit superfluous in the twenty-four rider squad. Marca reports that the team is also planning to slenderize the team down in terms of number of riders, which, in that case, would make the squad clean-out look like a quite logic move from the team management.
Mr. Pellizotti has so far not been reached for an interview, but has annouced an unscheduled press conference later tonight. We'll monitor the situation closely as it develops further. Stay tuned for further updates.
After the breaking news yesterday, stating that a few riders from the Ferrari squad was no longer wanted, and thus being expected to leave at the end of the season, team manager Mr. Pellizotti and his management has now given their picture of the situation on the late press conference yesterday. Also present was team's two big stars, Gianpaolo Caruso and Przemyslaw Niemiec.
Mr. Pellizotti acted calmly throughout the conference, and was, at least by the looks of his appearance, totally confident that there was nothing to worry about. Either way, the questions, sent by the huge amount of journalists present, hailed over Mr. Pellizotti and the rest of his management.
Here's a selection of questions asked during the conference:
Q: As the news reports, several riders appear to be supernumerary in the quite big squad. Any comments? A: Yes, it's true that we think that our squad needs to be reduced by a few numbers. We also hope to add some new riders to the squad during the next transfer period. But, as you understand, I won't give you any names.
Q: How about the sponsors? Media suggests that they're not completely satisfied with the situation at the moment. Response to that? A: Unfortunately, that's also true. Some of our current sponsors doesn't believe that our squad has the strength to one day reach the ProTour. For example, I got a call from the management at Specialized yesterday, informing me that we'll need to search for a new bike sponsor next season.
Q: So Specialized is out? How about the others? A: Well, we have a contract with both Ferrari and ERG that covers also next season, but currently, it looks like they'll step down to being minor sponsors. The management are working on finding a new main sponsor, and I can tell you that it looks quite promising at the moment. The team's existance is not questioned.
It's been a long time since we last saw an update in this thread, due to a couple of busy months for the management. Nevertheless, we'll now start recaping from the races we've been participating in.
The nasty Transfagarasan GP with one huge climb on the route.
However, we couldn't even dream of the eventual finish scenario. After an attack in the early kilometers of the day's big climb, Marco Osella found himself at the head of the race together with Pokerstars' Christophe Kern once the real slopes began. At the top of the climb they got company from the plucky little Alarcon, who however didn't have the legs to drop them over the very top.
Alarcon pulls his way up to Osella and Kern.
After a long, twisting descent down from the big mountains, a group of five would battle it out for the victory, with Rujano and Van den Broeck being the new additions. It looked ominous for us with Osella having to launch the sprint from the front, but a small mistake from Kern allowed Osella to shoot clear of the other four and pedal home to a surprising victory! Caruso won the sprint in the next group, for sixth.
We continue to catch up with the latest events in Canada, with the Tour of Beauce, a week long stage race with all kinds of terrain. Due to Caruso's and Niemiec's limited race days, we had to send a weaker squad, expecting to hunt stages rather than a GC result.
The opening stage in Canada, a lucky one for us.
The race turned into a success for us already on day one. A small climb just a couple of kilometers from the finish burned quite a few of the pure sprinters, while Dall'Antonia was able to profit from his strong climbing capacity to stay in front. He then pounced with just over a kilometer to go and held off the Red Bull duo Giaux and Hansen for the victory!
However, the our success in this race wasn't over yet. After four pretty mediocre days, we moved to the final day, where our breakaway plans was finally going to pay off. Capecchi joined the day's early breakaway, which proved to be successful. Using his experience as a sprinter, Capecchi managed to outgun the rest of the group in the final sprint for the line, making it two wins in this race!
Capecchi was the quickest out of the breakaway.
Stage six result:
1
Eros Capecchi
Ferrari - ERG
3h27'12
2
Assan Bazajev
Pirelli - Alfa Romeo
s.t.
3
Jakub Novak
Team Rothaus - Aegon
s.t.
4
Thomas Fothen
Team Trilux - Falke
s.t.
5
George Bennett
Oz Cycling Project
s.t.
6
Evan Oliphant
Cyclevox
s.t.
7
Ruslan Sambris
Hollister
s.t.
8
Cherif Abdallah
Rapha Condor - Qhubeka
s.t.
9
Stefano Locatelli
Team Bianchi
s.t.
10
Bram Tankink
Team WWE
s.t.
Also worth mentioning is that Maisto finished on an excellent ninth place in the General Classification. Being a part of the successful breakaway on the mountainous stage three gave him that opportunity, and he took it. The overall victory went to Puma's Pierre Rolland, who seized control of the race in the TT.
