Sunday’s stage eight of the Giro d Italia was pretty exciting as Ivan Basso put down the hammer in the closing kilometers of the first real mountain stage. It was real fun to watch although their were so many darn tv commercials, however it was cool to see the next Armstong emerge. In many ways it was very similar tactically to how Armstong won many of the mountain top finishes in his seven Tour de France wins.
At the bottom of the climb it was no surprise to see the team of Gilberto Simoni (Saunier Duval) doing much of the work controlling the peleton. Simoni let it be known in the May’s issue of procycling magazine (highly rated by Tour Guy) that he felt yesterday’s stage would be important to his victory of this years addition of the Giro.
Liquigas was also present at the front (early) on the climb as their team leader Danilo Di Luca lives near the stage and probably climbed that finial climb quite often. However it was team CSC and Ivan Basso who executed their plan to perfection. Not really attacking Basso had Sastre of CSC riding a very hard tempo with about 8 kilometers to go. At this point many of the rivals could not keep the pace up including Di Luca who was yoo-yooing back and forth barely hanging on for dear life. Simoni was still with Basso at this point, as was Cunego of the Lampre squad.
However Savoldelli was heading backwards and could not match the pace of the 10 or so riders that were at this point “the selection”. Cunego then attacked and got a few seconds on Basso, Sastre peeled off and dropped his pace and let Basso close the gap. Ivan had no problems at all closing the gap to Cunego and the two were together in a matter of seconds. At this point Basso did not really attack, he simply lifted the pace and Cunego could not stay with the CSC rider. With about 4 kilometers to go Basso looked incredible, taking out minutes on many of his rivals. Cunego was second overall for the day 30 seconds behind Basso and was able to move up in GC.
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