Category: Giro d'Italia

Chris Sorensen may have grown up in the flatness of Denmark, but he obviously trains in the mountains as the Saxo Bank cyclist beat the peloton to a mountaintop finish at the Giro d'Italia on Sunday.

The cold, foggy finish on the Monte Terminillo tested, but didn't take much of a toll on the overall leaders in the race on Stage 8.

Overall leader Alexandre Vinokourov and the group of rivals led by Cadel Evans all crossed the finish line about a minute after the Dane except for David Millar of Garmin-Transitions ….

Continue reading

How tough was Saturday's Stage 7 of the Giro d'Italia?

For one thing, it was 138 miles long. Also, it rained, hard at times; hard enough that a short section of the course was closed due to a landslide.

Compounding that, the peloton cycled over about a dozen miles of Tuscany's strada bianche, dirt roads. The rain, of course, turned the dirt to mud and the racers were covered in it.

Plowing through all this to victory, however, was Australia's Cadel Evans (above), who beat an elite group ….

Continue reading

Attacking in the early miles of a Giro d'Italia stage doesn't seem to be hurting anyone's chances for a stage win this year.

For the second day in a row, a member of a nearly day-long breakaway won the 103-mile Stage 6 from Fidenza to Carrara.

Australian Matthew Lloyd of Omega Pharma-Lotto dropped his breakaway partner, Rubens Bertogliatia of the Androni Giocattoli cycling team, on the final climb and sailed across the finish line for a solo victory.

There was no change in the overall leaders ….

Continue reading

A three-man breakaway survived to win Stage 5 at the Giro d'Italia on Thursday with the hot breath of the peloton on their backs.

Jerome Pineau of QuickStep led the trio across the finish line in Novi Ligure after they rode ahead of the peloton for nearly the entire 100-mile distance. There was no change among the overall leaders, as Vincent Nibali finished the day with a 13-second lead over Liquigas teammate Ivan Basso.

Although Pineau won the stage, it looks like you can credit Japan's Yukiya Arashiro (Bbox) for delivering the breakaway to the top 3 finish.

The break had a 5:40-minute lead over the peloton ….

Continue reading

The US-based Garmin-Transitions cycling team put itself in the pink at the 2008 Giro d'Italia with its performance at the team time trial, but that success wasn't repeated on Wednesday.

The Italian Liquigas-Doimo team beat the field by 13 seconds to elevate cyclist Vincenzo Nibali into the overall lead. He had started the day in 4th overall.

Previous race leader Alexandre Vinokourov dropped to 6th place overall after his Astana team came in tied for 5th at 38 seconds behind Liquigas. Australian Cadel Evans, who lost the pink leader's jersey after Stage 3, dropped further back after his BMC Racing team finished a dismal 12th place, 1:31 behind the winner ….

Continue reading

While the Stage 2 victory of Tyler Farrar brought joy to the Garmin-Transitions pro cycling team at the Giro d'Italia on Sunday, Christian Vande Velde's crash and abandonment in Stage 3 on Monday must have brought sorrow.

It's the second year in a row that the 33-year-old US rider and team captain for Garmin has crashed out of the Giro in Stage 3. Last year, he broke five vertebrae, a rib and his pelvis.

Although there's no official confirmation yet, it appeared that Vande Velde broke or seriously injured his right collarbone when he crashed about 25 miles from the finish …

Continue reading

Cadel Evans takes overall lead

Washington state's own Tyler Farrar won the closing sprint in the second stage of the Giro d'Italia on Sunday, marking his third win of 2010.

Cadel Evans grabbed the maglia rosa from UK's Bradley Wiggins, who won the Stage 1 prologue time trial on Saturday.

Farrar, 25, hails from Wenatchee. His father, Ed Farrar, is an orthopedic surgeon in that central Washington city who is battling back from a life-threatening head-on bike crash versus an automobile one morning in 2008.

That same fortitude that keeps his father from giving up helped propel his son forward ….

Continue reading

What epic bicycle race starts in Amsterdam this weekend?

The 2010 Giro d'Italia, of course. The three-week Grand Tour around Italy — rolling out Saturday until May 30 — often starts far from home. Work is even underway to launch the 2012 Giro in Washington DC.

Something as extreme as a trans-Atlantic transition might be necessary to maintain interest in the race in North America in coming years as the Amgen Tour of California has scheduled itself May 16 – 23, right in the middle of the classic Italian bike race.

That scheduling competition in May means that the cycling teams and racers have to choose between the two events.

Lance Armstrong, who competed at the Giro for the first time ever last year, and sprinter Mark Cavendish (Columbia), for instance, have opted to race in California (Armstrong's RadioShack team wasn't even invited to the Giro). 

World champion Cadel Evans, however, is racing at the Giro ….

Continue reading

As strange as it may seem, a move is afoot to bring the Giro d'Italia bike race to Washington DC in 2012.

The Giro characteristically has begun the 3-week bike race for a few days in other countries before relocating to Italy for the bulk of the miles.  The Tour de France also will visit adjacent countries during its three-week run.

But never before has one of these races included a TransAtlantic flight as part of the race …

Continue reading