A recurrent theme of the 2007 Giro d'Italia is becoming Alessandro Petacchi wins the stage and Danilo Di Luca retains the lead.
It was true again on Thursday for the essentially flat, 126-mile race from Udine to Riese Pio X; Petacchi posted his fourth stage win of the three-week Giro and Di Luca accepted the overall leader's pink jersey for the 10th time.
As Di Luca holds a gap of 2-minutes-24 — or more — over the field, it's beginning to look very likely that he'll hold the pink jersey all the way to the finish in Milan on Thursday.
Friday's stage is a “transition” mountain route and Saturday is the final time trial, a 27-mile course from Bardolino to Verona. The major contest on Sunday will be to get a stage win in Milan, not to overthrown the pink jersey.
Di Luca's Liquigas team has controlled this Giro from Day 1. That was the team time trial on the island of Sardenia that put teammate Ernesto Gasparotto in the pink. Since then, Liquigas has had a rider in the pink jersey every day save four — when Marco Pinotti of T-Mobile held the race lead.
VeloNews reports that Petacchi, who has 23 career Giro stage wins, took a particularly long sprint but won over Maximiliano Richeze. Once again, a lot of credit goes to Petacchi's Milram team.
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