One rider I really like, Daniele Bennati, won Stage 3 of the Giro d'Italia on yesterday night.
I was on the edge of my seat as the final 10 kilometres of the stage from Catania to Milazzo, the last of three opening stages on the Mafia island of Sicily, unfolded before my eyes on Eurosport. The Giro always offers a different stage set-up for a different sort of rider and a different kind of sprinter took the win on that tricky stage, right when the SmSes were flowing in - "Zabel! Zabel! Zabel!" or "Hondo! Hondo!" .. You see, nobody, including me, thought of Bennati, especially when Zabel was the only seriously big sprinter in the picture in the final dash. But if you remember, Bennati is hot. Just two weeks ago, he closed the Tour de Romandie with a big bunch sprint win. Zabel was stuck on his wheel, but it wasn't truly flat, and Bennati had an edge, including much more power!
Honestly, I'd thought the finish of the stage with so many undulations, even some little tricky climbs in the last 70km or so, was made for a juicy Paolo Bettini-Danilo Hondo-Davide Rebellin showdown. But it seemed, as the final 10km unfolded, that the Serramenti Diquigiovanni team had left Hondo to fend for himself, Rebellin was just nowhere. But probably it was also just my imagination an faulty judgement. The finish looked a bit more flat than I'd expected.
I'd even thought the attack of Antonio Colom from Astana was going to succeed at one point, but he sort of turned off when Lilian Jegou (FdJ) took off in pursuit. It is rather hard for a Frenchman to win stages in Italy as history will show, but not so hard for an Italian to win in the Tour de France, as the late Marco Pantani and world champion Bettini showed.
But at least, after the opening team time trial that had Slipstream win and Christian van de Velde in the maglia rosa, the second stage onwards gave some credibility to my sort of preview of the Giro posted earlier.
Of my ranked dark horses: Ricardo Ricco, the Cobra, struck early with a stage win on day 2, which gave Liquigas' Franco Pellizotti in the maglia rosa quite early. So, not too bad for this Malaysian so called cycling journalist huh?
Tonight's fourth stage, covering 183km from Pizzo Calabro, through Catanzaro and ending in Lungomare, sees the first moderate climb (Passo di Pietra Spada) but still ends in tricky sort of terrain like last night. I think Bettini looks like he needs a couple or more stages to really get going, but I guess he might go for the mountains points tonight. Then the stage win? Probably, the first big bunch sprint battle should happen now. Let's see the Milram, Liquigas, Lampre, Gerolsteiner battle royale!
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