Welcome to this 2nd stage of Giro 'd Italia. Yesterday, we saw Bettini taking a pretty unexpected victory when some of the favourites had been dropped. Today, there's a very short, but steep, climb in the middle of the race. It's of course unlikely that the GC-favourites will use it, but it may have an impact on the sprinters' chances of winning. Time will tell.
Today's TV-break was divided into two groups. In the leading group, you would find Hulsmans, Ulissi, Astarloa, Moreni and Da Cruz. Da Cruz didn't seems too motivated, though, and was quickly dropped to the 2nd group which had the following riders: Geslin, Willems, Thomas and Rodriguez. As with Da Cruz, Geraint Thomas couldn't hang on and eventually had to let go of the 2nd group. He was caught in between the peloton and the 2nd breakaway group and spent lots of energy out there today.
The gap gradually increased, and on the climb the peloton had 6'47 minutes to the leading group. On the climb, the Domina Vacanze team started increasing the pace. This also meant that several riders had to let go. Surprisingly (yes, this is irony), Schumacher had to let go off the peloton along with several other riders. Most riders made it back, though, but - and that's an important but - Cavendish seemed too tired. Actually, he was so tired that he crashed all by himself just after the climb! He did get back up on his bike, but he seems injuried as he was unable to hang on to the group which had picked him up
Anyway, as expected the two breakaway groups were caught. Actually, the front group was caught with 25 km to go, so the sprint teams had lots of time to organize. However, as yesterday, the sprint ended up looking rather unorganized. No one really wanted to do anything, but at least Carlsberg sent O'Grady to lead out for Corioni --- and the sprint could begin.
And here we go! Bettini decided to do the sprint all by himself (upper right part of the screenshot) while O'Grady made a perfect lead-out for Corioni. Question is if it was enough? 1 km to go at this screen.
An easy victory for Corioni - and what a lead by O'Grady! Who needs Petacchi when you can do stuff like that?
However, there's also some bad news for several managers. A bunch of riders (56) had to let go at the very end of the stage. This bunch included Cunego, Pellizotti, Ricco, Garzelli, Caruso, Gil, Botero, Sella, Piepoli, Perez Cuapio - and several others. I'll comment on the time loss at the beginning of the next stage.
