Giro di Lombardia
by VeloNews.com
- November 09, 2009
- Comments
With four kilometers to go, it was obvious that an Italian wasn’t going to win Giro di Lombardia for the ninth consecutive year.
A Belgian and a Spaniard ? Philippe Gilbert (Silence-Lotto) and Samuel Sánchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) – were 12 seconds clear of a chasing group that included three-time winner Damiano Cunego (Lampre), enough gap to end the Italian stranglehold on the season-concluding fall classic.
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Saturday’s Giro di Lombardia – the “Race of the Falling Leaves” – is Italy’s long good-bye to yet another exciting, daring and controversy-filled season.
In the last major European event of the 2009 campaign, Lombardia always packs an emotional and palpating punch to put the peloton to rest for an ever-shortening winter to recharge the batteries going into the next year.
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Astana Cycling Team’s Last 2009 Races
The team line-up for the next races:
Giro del Piemonte (Ita) 15/10/2009
Riders: Jani Brajkovic, Valeriy Dmitriyev, Alexandr Dyachenko, Chris Horner, Maxim Iglinskiy, Roman Kireyev, Bolat Raimbekov & Alexandr Vinokourov
Director: Alexandr Shefer
Giro di Lombardia (Ita) 17/10/2009
Riders: Jani Brajkovic, Valeriy Dmitriyev, Alexandr Dyachenko, Chris Horner, Maxim Iglinskiy, Roman Kireyev, Bolat Raimbekov & Alexandr Vinokourov
Director: Alexandr Shefer
Chris Horner has signed with Team RadioShack for the next two seasons, according to an Oregon newspaper.
Horner told The Oregonian that he had talked with other teams, “but wanted to stay here” — that being alongside Astana teammates Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimer.
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Behind the story there is always a greater story, one which is often missed.
The Tour of Lombardy unfolded in traditional fashion: a breakaway, a gauged acceleration in the peloton, the knife-stabbing attacks that seal most riders’ fate, and then, finally, the winning attack and the defeated sprints for the places of honor. The favorite won.
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Damiano Cunego won the 102nd Giro di Lombardia, the season’s final one-day classic, for the third time in his career on Saturday.
Cunego – winner in 2004 and 2007 – scored the win after taking a gamble and attacking 15 kilometers from the finish at lake front of Lake Como in northern Italy.
Cunego won the famed “race of the falling leaves” ahead of a hard chasing Janez Brajkovic (Astana), who reached the line 20 seconds later.
[nid:84391]Cunego earned the victor’s laurels at the end of the 242-kilometer race that had been largely controlled by his Lampre team.
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LAMPRE (ITA)
1. Damiano Cunego (ITA)
2. Alessandro Ballan (ITA)
3. Francesco Gavazzi (ITA)
4. Paolo Tiralongo (ITA)
5. Sylvester Szmyd (POL)
6. Matteo Bono (ITA)
7. Marco Marzano (ITA)
8. Mauro Santambrogio (ITA)
Director: Maurizio Piovani
ACQUA & SAPONE – CAFFE’ MOKAMBO (ITA)
11. Massimo Codol (ITA)
12. Francesco Failli (ITA)
13. Stefano Garzelli (ITA)
14. Andrea Masciarelli (ITA)
15. Francesco Masciarelli (ITA)
16. Simone Masciarelli (ITA)
17. Giuseppe Palumbo (ITA)
18.
While Damiano Cunego of Lampre-Fondital returned to his sensational best on Saturday to win a second Tour of Lombardy, three years after he took his first, Cadel Evans was left ruing what might have been. Predictor-Lotto’s remarkable Aussie crossed the line in sixth place, 10 seconds back, to end his season with overall victory in the 2007 UCI ProTour, but he felt he was good enough to have been sprinting for the day’s main prize alongside Cunego and runner-up Riccardo Ricco of Saunier Duval-Prodir.
“I got something in my eye on the descent into Lecco [with 80km to go],” Evans told VeloNews
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While two-time defending world champion Paolo Bettini (Quick Step-Innergetic) is heavily favored to score his third consecutive Tour of Lombardy victory on Saturday, the venerable 242km fall classic is not the only title in play. The 2007 ProTour series is also up for grabs because the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) this week handed longtime ProTour leader Danilo Di Luca (Liquigas) a three-month suspension for his implication in the 2004 Oil for Drugs scandal, which caused the UCI to drop him from the standings.
These developments put the consistent Cadel Evans (Predictor-Lotto) into the
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