Brutt force!

That's a picture of Pavel Brutt after the finish of Stage Nine of Le Tour de Langkawi in Seremban in 2007. That was his team's first ever stage win in an international race.
Last night, after Slipstream's David Millar threw his bike over the barricades having a broken chain in the final three kilometres, the 26-year old Russian, in similar fashion to which he won that stage in Seremban a year ago, ditched breakaway partners Johannes Frohlinger, Luis Felipe Laverde and Francisco Perez to register Tinkoff Credit Systems' first ever Grand Tour stage win in Stage Five of the Giro d'Italia - over 203km from Belvedere Marittimo to Contursi Terme.
It was those four, plus Millar who'd made the decisive break and maintained a gap which at a point reached almost six minutes over the main bunch. The final 10 kilometres provided an undulating terrain soaked by what was left of an earlier downpour, which in some sense I think, gave an advantage to the breakaway.
It was the first uphill finish, although the final three kilometres saw a rise of about 3 to 4 percent gradient.
French journalist, and that country's media officer for the Olympic Games, Jean Francois Quenet had indicated that Laverde is used to winning stages under those circumstances, as he watched the race with me. Funny that he was also the one most happy with Brutt's win.
As usual, I'd also made the wrong assumption. I'd thought the bunch would catch up and world champion Paolo Bettini would have won it. Instead, he won the sprint for fifth spot.