I told you...

What a fantastic day. Surely one of my best days as an Iban supporter. Absolutely amazing.... I don`t know where to begin to be honest, I`m just so happy right now. I guess Sopela was right, huh? Iban for sure knew what he was doing, and showed what great form he`s in. There`ll be several posts on Iban`s win today and in the days to come, but I guess I`ll start with how it happened. For those of you who weren`t able to watch it unfold, here`s how Iban won the 19th stage of the Giro:

Early on, Iban tried to get away in a break. The break was huge, too big in fact, so Liquigas wouldn`t let it get away. When Iban realised there was no way the break was going to last, he and Paolo Betting just eased of and waited for the pack. It was a wise decision, as the break was reeled back in a few kilometres later. For a long time, it was all status quo in the pack. None got away, and, really, no one even tried. But, on the stage`s first big climb, on the Pian del Fugazze, the action started. Iban`s mountain-goat team-mate Leonardo Piepoli went for broke, but the pace set by Liquigas in the pack was way too high for him. Then, the Maglia Rosa himself came to the front. He upped the pace considerably, resulting in only 15 riders making up the leading group at the summit. Embarrassing attempts by Mazzoleni and a couple of others followed, but they had no chance. Then, with 70 km to go, it happened. On the slippery descent, Iban suddenly attacked the group and straight away got several seconds. As Iban`s gap continued to grow, 6 riders sensed this was the move of the day, and bridged up not much later. The six riders were strong-men Garzelli, Rasmussen, Losada, Petrov, Marzano and Visconti. The 7 riders in front quickly established an insurmountable gap, but Iban wasn`t finished with his attacking. Iban and Spanish amigo Alberto Losada of Caisse d`Epargne left the other 5 trailing in their wake at the base of the descent. The two worked tremendously together, and at the base of the last big climb, they had a gap of half a minute. The peloton had no interest in the break, starting the climb some 4 minutes down. The Passo Balino is a 15 km climb, though not very steep. Nonetheless, Iban and Losada worked hard on the ascent, ballooning their gap to almost a minute. Iban was doing most of the pulling, but his Caisse companion impressively hold on. But with 5 km to go on the climb, Iban took off. Losada had no reply, and Iban quickly got several hundred metres. Losada was absoerbed by the five other escapees, before dropping further back. Danish climbing-ace Rasmussen wasn`t pleased with the way things were turning out, so he jumped clear of the others in pursuit of Iban. The Dane looked strong, but at the summit, he hadn`t gotten any closer, and was still some 40 seconds down. He was then joined by Petrov, Marzano and Visconti. The remaining kilometres were mostly downhill, and even though Petrov gave it a go to catch Iban, none came close to him. He successfully defended his lead, and crossed the line solo 43 seconds ahead of runner-up Visconti. Iban raised his hands in celebration, to raptourous respons from the many spectators in Comano Terme.