Well, were two thirds into this years Giro d’ Italia and Basso has truly dominated the race, as the Giro heads into the finial week you can bet their will be more of a shake up on the general classification however Basso looks to be a shoe in for the win (baring any crazy crash or sickness).
Their have been several opportunities for all of the riders to step up and challenge Basso for the pink jersey however no one has been able to shake the CSC rider. Ivan Basso has looked very strong in all disciplines needed for the over all win, he placed second in the time trial only 28 seconds behind Jan Ullrich and has been simply unstoppable in the mountains, and backed by the power house team of CSC it seams very much like the “Discovery / Armstrong” type of dominating win.
Yesterdays stage 13 (stage profile seen to the left) provided some very exciting racing however it was somewhat dampened by the lack on coverage online (cycling.tv) as the race conditions were terrible and the Italian tv crews had a tough time getting any pictures of the race. The english broadcasters of cycling.tv did their best to update everyone “listening” and every now and then their would be several live pictures for a few seconds.
Simoni did in fact try to gain some much need time over his rivals (including Simoni’s number one arch enemy Damiano Cunego) in hopes of moving up the GC). The two time Giro winner was part of an elite group of cyclists that included Basso and team mate Leonardo Piepoli however Simoni was dropped with about 3 kilometers to go on the day’s climb, as Basso and Piepoli rode together to the summit where Piepoli would leave Basso. At the summit Basso had close to a minute and a half on his main competitors and looked very strong. Not wanting to take any chances at all Basso descended the finial 6 kilometers incredibly slow as it was very dangerous with wet roads and cold conditions (at the summit their was a lot of snow). None the less Basso added even more time on the field on last Saturdays demanding stage and heads into the finial week with a nice lead of more than 3 minutes to Jose Enrique Gutierrez of Phonak and more than 5 minutes ahead of last years winner Paolo Savoldelli.
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