The Story of the Giro d'Italia: A Year-by-Year History of the Tour of Italy, Volume 2: 1971-2011

by McGann, Carol

  The next day had an uphill sprint finish in Agrigento. Riccò, who had targeted stage two, uncorked an irresistible sprint for the win. Vande Velde couldn’t stay with the leaders at the final rush to the line and had to give up his maglia rosa to Franco Pellizotti, who had never worn pink. Pellizotti said that this was his year to capture the big prize because hanging over him was the knowledge that his team, Liquigas, had signed Ivan Basso, who would surely be the Liquigas team leader in 2009 after serving his suspension.

  As the race crossed over to the mainland, Pellizotti nursed his narrow 1-second lead over Vande Velde while Di Luca remained close at 7 seconds.

  Over the first few stages of the Giro the riders grew ever more angry with the difficult transfers and late arrivals to their hotels, the ferry ride from the island of Sicily having been particularly mismanaged. Some riders said that they had yet to be in bed before midnight. To appease the growing fury of the peloton, stage six was shortened from 265 kilometers down to 232.

  Early in this long sixth stage, a fuga di bidone containing former Paris–Roubaix winner Magnus Backstedt and Italian Road Champion Giovanni Visconti pulled itself free, finishing 11 minutes 34 seconds ahead the peloton. This put young Visconti in the lead with Matthias Russ of Gerolsteiner in second place with the same time. Matteo Priamo of the CSF-Navigare squad won the stage, the first of several wins for this, uh, amazing team in this Giro.

  The General Classification stood thus: 1. Giovanni Visconti

  2. Matthias Russ @ same time

  3. Daniele Nardello @ 1 minute 22 seconds

  4. Alan Pérez Lezaun @ 4 minutes 42 seconds

  5. Francesco Gavazzi @ 5 minutes 34 seconds

  6. Matteo Priamo @ 9 minutes 7 seconds

  The riders were aware that the twin Astana threats, Contador and Klöden were staying hidden and riding as economically as possible. World Champion Bettini said he thought Contador was looking better with each day.

  Stage seven had a hilltop finish in Pescocostanzo after a leg-softening day crossing the Apennines. The contenders finished together, about three minutes behind the day’s successful breakaway. Di Luca, Contador, Menchov, Leipheimer, Simoni, Pellizotti and Riccò remained clustered within two minutes of each other. Suffering like a dog, Visconti managed to hang on to the lead.

  The next day brought the Giro to Tivoli, on the outskirts of Rome, with a “sting in the tail” uphill finish. This is the sort of stage that suits light, explosive sprinter types like Davide Rebellin and Paolo Bettini, but they were denied this time. The ever-surprising Riccò beat the specialists at their own game to win his second stage this Giro. With the high mountains still to be ridden, observers wondered if “The Cobra” were burning his matches too soon. Halfway through the stage Alberto Contador crashed, fracturing his elbow. He remounted and finished with the field.

  Stage nine went up the western coast to land the race in Tuscany for its first rest day. The General Classification showed that, excepting the first three riders who were leading by virtue of their breakaway successes, the race remained tight:

  1. Giovanni Visconti

  2. Matthias Russ @ 34 seconds

  3. Gabriele Bosisio @ 5 minutes 53 seconds

  4. Danilo Di Luca @ 7 minutes 27 seconds

  6. Riccardo Riccò @ 7 minutes 33 seconds

  8. Alberto Contador @ 7 minutes 56 seconds

  After the rest day the Giro moved to Le Marche for a 39.4-kilometer individual time trial. Starting on the coast in Pesaro, the entire route to Urbino was a long, hard, uphill drag with patches of ten and twelve percent gradient. Lampre’s Marzio Bruseghin put himself into contention by winning the stage, while Contador showed his form by finishing only 8 seconds slower. Riccò (who crashed on the wet roads), Di Luca and Pellizotti each lost over two minutes, significant losses in an otherwise close race.

  The next stages were for the sprinters as Visconti grimly held on to the lead. His ownership of the Pink Jersey was expected to end when the Giro hit the high mountains and end it did on stage fourteen.

  The 2008 Giro’s final chapter began in Verona. The fourteenth stage started in the city of Romeo and Juliet and headed almost due north into the Dolomites with two fearsome ascents to be conquered, the Passo Manghen and the hilltop finish at Alpe di Pampeago. Emanuele Sella took off early with a small group and then left the other breakaways behind on the Manghen. He stayed away till the end to win what looked like a beautiful solo victory. Contador, riding for what La Gazzetta called “Fortress Astana” had a less than perfect day, losing nearly a half-minute to Menchov, Pellizotti and Riccò. Although the lead passed to stage seven winner Gabriele Bosisio, Contador remained the first of the contenders. The Italian bookmakers still showed Di Luca as the odds-on favorite to win the Giro, but Di Luca, bleeding little dribs and drabs of time all over Italy, was not the rider he had been in 2007.

  The General Classification stood thus: 1. Gabriele Bosisio

  2. Alberto Contador @ 5 seconds

  3. Marzio Bruseghin @ 28 seconds

  4. Riccardo Riccò @ 1 minute 2 seconds

  5. Danilo Di Luca @ 1 minute 7 seconds

  On Sunday came stage fifteen, il tappone, with the Pordoi, San Pellegrino, Giau and Falzarego passes and a hilltop finish on the Marmolada.

  Sella was on fire, taking off with a small group at only the fifth kilometer. As the race unfolded, he slowly shed his fellow breakaways until the final climb where he dropped his last two companions and sped away for his second spectacular mountain victory. Close behind him, the small group of contenders was fighting hard. Riccò dug deep twice before getting away. Neither Contador nor Menchov could stay with the Cobra and conceded about fifteen seconds. Yet, Contador had acquitted himself well. He had withstood serious punishment and at the end of the day was the owner of the Pink Jersey.

  The new General Classification: 1. Alberto Contador

  2. Riccardo Riccò @ 33 seconds

  3. Danilo Di Luca @ 55 seconds

  4. Marzio Bruseghin @ 1 minute 18 seconds

  5. Denis Menchov @ 1 minute 20 seconds

  While there was much celebration over the wonderful exploits of the intrepid riders, the recent racing gave the observant sports fan much to worry about—for example, stage fifteen’s second place, Domenico Pozzovivo (CSF) ascended the Marmolada at a staggering 1,840 vertical meters per hour. The Giro’s best climbers were climbing as fast as Marco Pantani in his prime. Something seemed wrong. No, something was wrong.

  The next day, Monday, saw the eagerly awaited thirteen-kilometer super-steep timed hill-climb to the Plan de Corones. Pellizotti was the surprise stage winner. For all the difficulty the stage posed, the top rankings of the General Classification remained mostly unchanged. This race still had a marvelous equipoise with six riders within three minutes of the leader.

  Stage nineteen crossed the mountains just northeast of Milan, taking in the Vivione and the Presolana before the hilltop finish on Monte Pora. On the slick, wet descent of the Vivione, Di Luca escaped with teammate Savoldelli. They quickly carved out a one-minute lead over the group containing the major contenders. On the Presolana, Di Luca dropped Savoldelli and pressed on alone with a 105-second lead.

  Back in the Contador group Simoni, who had been having trouble maintaining contact, was dropped for good. On the Monte Pora ascent, as Di Luca looked like he was riding into pink, Contador finally reacted and attacked. The best riders were able to claw their way back to him. Now Riccò jumped hard twice. The second acceleration was successful and Riccò motored away from the others in search of Di Luca, who was too far gone to be caught.

  The day’s racing tightened up the standings a bit more. Riccò was just a few seconds away from the lead and Di Luca was now in the hunt for a second Giro victory:

  1. Alberto Contador

  2. Riccardo Riccò @ 4 seconds

>   3. Danilo Di Luca @ 21 seconds

  4. Marzio Bruseghin @ 2 minutes 0 seconds

  5. Franco Pellizotti @ 2 minutes 5 seconds

  Riccò, who had a gift for saying the wrong thing, was furious that he had missed having the lead by only four seconds. He lashed out at Sella for working with Contador. Of course Sella was working for his own interests. Riccò then blamed his bike and finally said that he would be in the lead except for the stage ten Urbino time trial.

  Stage twenty, the penultimate stage, was the final day in the mountains. Even though two of the Giro’s most difficult climbs, the Gavia and the Mortirolo were scheduled for the day, the summits came too far from the finish to greatly affect the outcome. Sella rocketed to his third mountain stage win. The riders were growing weary and after Simoni’s stage nineteen disaster where he lost over twelve minutes, Di Luca had his own catastrophe, losing over four minutes. Riccò tried to distance himself from Contador, who was growing stronger with every stage. His attacks came to naught and the gap remained at four seconds. Riccò now blamed his team, saying that if he had Astana behind him, he would be in the lead. That left things to be settled in the final stage, a 28.5-kilometer individual time trial into the heart of Milan.

  Contador was the fastest of the contenders, cementing his victory, which was, as in the style of Franco Balmamion, done without winning a single stage. Given his time trial skills, some thought Bruseghin had an outside chance at snatching victory, but he said that the ferocity of the 2008 Giro had left him spent.

  Final 2008 Giro d’Italia General Classification: 1. Alberto Contador (Astana) 89 hours 56 minutes 49 seconds

  2. Riccardo Riccò (Saunier Duval-Scott) @ 1 minute 57 seconds

  3. Marzio Bruseghin (Lampre) @ 2 minutes 54 seconds

  4. Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas) @ 2 minutes 56 seconds

  5. Denis Menchov (Rabobank) @ 3 minutes 37 seconds

  Climbers’ Competition: 1. Emanuele Sella (CSF Group-Navigare): 136 points

  2. Vasil Kiryienka (Tinkoff Credit Systems): 63

  3. Fortunato Balliani (CSF Group-Navigare): 48

  Points Competition: 1. Daniele Bennati (Liquigas): 189 points

  2. Emanuele Sella (CSF Group-Navigare): 138

  3. Riccardo Riccò (Saunier Duval-Scott): 131

  I wrote earlier that the racers were flying up the mountains at speeds that raised more than a few eyebrows. The aftermath of the 2008 Giro provided a sad explanation. Sella, who won three mountain stages and the King of the Mountains prize, was found with a third generation of EPO, called CERA, in his system in an out-of-competition test in July. Two months later Riccò, who had insinuated that other racers were doping, was thrown out of the Tour de France after being positive for the same EPO/CERA. His teammate Leonardo Piepoli confessed that he too, had been guilty of the same offense, although he later withdrew the admission. Andreas Klöden made a badly veiled accusation against the CSF team that it had a team doping program. CSF’s manager threatened legal action but, of course, didn’t follow through.

  It was rumored that this third generation of EPO had been widely used throughout the peloton in the 2008 Giro because the riders believed there was no test for it, which was true in May. Given that CSF had another rider who was not allowed to start the Giro because of a positive for steroids, one can reasonably conclude that some teams either continued to run institutionalized doping programs or looked the other way as their riders performed so spectacularly that the only explanation was doping.

  In 2008 the Tour had its doping control performed by the French Anti Doping Agency (AFLD). After the Tour was over it was found that several riders had submitted suspicious urine samples. The AFLD went back and tested their blood samples and found that the third place rider, Bernhard Kohl, and the rider who had won both time trials, Stefan Schumacher, were both positive for EPO/CERA. That immediately raised the question of retesting Giro samples for EPO/CERA, whose existence at the time wasn’t known by the dope testers.

  The UCI was handling the Giro’s testing and said re-checking would serve no purpose. On that day I am sure the angels wept.

  2009. On December 13 the Giro presented a route celebrating its one-hundredth anniversary. Starting with a team time trial in Venice, the Giro headed almost immediately into the hills with mountaintop finishes in stages four and five. With important challenges this early, a rider wouldn’t have the luxury of riding into form for the final week. Also, with key stages coming so early it would be difficult for a racer to attempt the Giro/Tour double because it would mean holding peak form from the beginning of May until the end of July. Tossed in the middle of the race was the longest individual time trial in seventeen years, 60.6 kilometers. Basso said this would be the key to the race. A total of six hilltop finishes made a route that would be a constant, ongoing war. The final time trial, starting and ending at the Roman Forum, was a spectacular finishing touch. It was the first time the Giro hadn’t finished in Milan since 1989.

  The list of riders planning to contest the Centennial Giro made it look like one of the better fields in the race’s history. Ivan Basso (having served his suspension), Danilo Di Luca, Carlos Sastre, Gilberto Simoni, Damiano Cunego, Levi Leipheimer, Denis Menchov, Thor Hushovd and Alessandro Petacchi all planned to attend the Giro. And there was one more rider.

  With rumors swirling everywhere, seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong announced on September 9, 2008, that he was returning to professional cycling, joining his former director Johan Bruyneel’s Astana squad, with victory in the 2009 Tour de France his ultimate goal.

  The reaction to Armstrong’s return was mixed. Some welcomed it, feeling that cycle racing and the cycle trade would get a shot in the arm. Tour boss Christian Prudhomme seemed indifferent, saying Armstrong would be welcome if he complied with all of the new anti-doping protocols. Underlying the negative reactions was the feeling that Armstrong had never dispelled the allegations of doping that followed him starting with his first Tour victory in 1999. The German television networks, who were in the midst of negotiating new Tour broadcasting rights, said that they were “not amused” with Armstrong’s plans and that Armstrong belonged to an earlier generation, that he was a piece of the past that they did not want to see again.

  To counter these feelings, Armstrong announced he would ride the Tour with total transparency. All of his blood values and tests would be posted online for all to see. Armstrong later reneged on that promise, saying that doing so would be expensive and complicated.

  Meanwhile, Angelo Zomegnan made several trips to Texas, eventually persuading Armstrong to ride the Giro. Zomegnan brought more than the argument that Armstrong’s career remained incomplete without a Giro win: Zomegnan is alleged to have brought a big bag of money. A rumored $3,000,000 in start money was said to have helped seal the deal.

  Over the winter Cunego and Simoni, at the instigation of their wives, finally made real peace. Cunego was targeting the Tour and said that he would help Simoni win the Giro, even though they were on different teams. Cunego sensed that Armstrong and his friend Basso would work together and there had to be a countervailing force to their potentially powerful combination.

  Armstrong’s training was set back when he crashed in the first stage of the Vuelta a Castilla y León and broke his collarbone. It may have slowed him a bit, but three days after surgery requiring a five-inch steel plate and twelve screws to repair the break, he was back on the trainer. In early May he came in second to teammate Levi Leipheimer in the American Tour of the Gila stage race.

  A few days before the Giro’s start it came out that the Astana riders hadn’t been paid by the Kazakh oligarchs backing the team for so long that the UCI’s required bank reserve covering two-month’s salary had been or was about to be used. Noises were made that Armstrong might take over the team, but all that was almost forgotten in the spectacle of a Venice start
to the centenary Giro.

  Garmin-Slipstream had targeted the first stage, a 20.5 kilometer team time trial on the Venice Lido, hoping to repeat their 2008 time trial victory that put Christian Vande Velde in the lead. Instead, American squad Team Columbia won, beating Garmin by 6 seconds and putting sprinter Mark Cavendish in pink. Armstrong said because his conditioning was behind schedule, Levi Leipheimer would be the team’s designated leader. Sounded nice, but Armstrong was the first of his Astana team to cross the line. If Astana had won (they were third by 13 seconds), Armstrong would have been wearing the maglia rosa.

  The next day reminded the world again that Armstrong was probably the finest stage racer of the age, even if he lacked his previous Tour-winning horsepower. As the pack raced through a technically difficult set of circuits around the city of Trieste, Armstrong had a teammate take him to the front to stay out of trouble. It was a canny move. A crash shortly before the end delayed all but about 50 of the riders. Between having a team that could ride a good time trial and avoiding the crash, Armstrong was now the second-best-placed Classification contender in the race. Some of his competitors were already a minute or more in arrears

  A few chosen riders and their General Classification standings: 1. Mark Cavendish

  8. Christian Vande Velde @ 20 seconds

  10. Lance Armstrong @ 27 seconds

  18. Levi Leipheimer @ 40 seconds

  27. Denis Menchov @ 52 seconds

  45. Ivan Basso @ 1 minute 7 seconds

  Stage four had a mountaintop finish at San Martino di Castrozza, due north of Padua. On the lower reaches of the final ascent, Basso’s Liquigas team was pulling the peloton, but couldn’t drop any of the contenders. With about 350 meters to go Danilo Di Luca hit the gas and then closer to the finish, he did it again. His speed was irresistible and he came across the line with both hands off the bars. Wunderkind Thomas Lövkvist was the new leader with Di Luca two seconds back.